Charles Brown - SI at Large
by Godogma
Summary: Charles Brown was just a regular guy at a dead end job until he opened the box from Ebay. After which his life became an adventure. Join us for the story of the aspiring murder-hobo and his friends as they jaunt from universe to universe making money and causing chaos by exploiting reality. Current crosses AD&D, Harry Potter, BtVS and random movies and other RPG games.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Neither I nor dogbertcarroll my partner in crime and craziness own any intellectual property claimed by any major corporation. We just own the story.

A tall well built bearded man sat bored on a couch, hurling throwing knives at a dartboard with the metal edging removed. 'Dead end job with almost no hours on the schedule; check. Essentially five and half to six days off a week; check. Boredom and reading fanfiction; check.'

Abruptly there came a knocking at the door. Ambling over to the door revealed the Fedex man - a brief guaranteed surcease from boredom as he handed over the goofy digital clipboard for my signature and afterward exchanged it for a small and surprisingly heavy box for its size.

"Thanks Fred, seeya next delivery," Charles called to the Fedex guy who waved cheerfully and climbing in his big brown truck, drove off.

Charles ambled back inside and tore into the box, cutting the tape with one of the throwing knives negligently and tossing the knife into the dartboard.

Slowly and carefully Charles lifted the surprisingly good quality vambrace from the SciFi channel's canceled Sliders/Stargate knockoff that apparently combined the worst of both shows which is why they never got past the pilot. It was made of what seemed to be carbon fiber plates and he'd actually bought it with the intentions of converting it into a PipBoy.

It was surprisingly heavy and when placed around his left forearm suddenly locked into place and the featureless black material lit up like an LCD touch screen. "Oh fuck; this is gonna either be really cool, or it's going to suck more dick than my ex, Lucille." (Yes, I've heard all the jokes; no, none of them are funny.)

Checking out the vambrace he discovered a menu… it was strangely similar to a PipBoy… it showed everything he was currently wearing along with everything in his pockets. When he cautiously dragged his pocket knife to the right hand on his character sheet he found it in his hand, instead of in the cargo pocket of his jeans. "Alright… I've got an inventory management feature… lets see what else this thing does."

Clicking through the other tabs revealed he wasn't irradiated, poisoned, or cursed and was at full health and stamina which he thought was a definite plus. Other than the athlete's foot he'd been spraying with antifungal powder he was in perfect shape according to the device. Curiously he dropped his pocket knife, trying to get it to go into the inventory and felt the weight settle in his pocket. "That's pretty nifty."

He checked through the tabs and noted that he was slightly dehydrated according to the food and drink status monitors so grabbed a bottle of water and drained it in three pulls before tossing it into the plastic bin.

Another tab listed Worlds Visited, under which was listed Earth and a string of numbers and had an option to set it as the home world. Shrugging he did so, he wasn't anywhere near stupid enough to ignore that particular piece of technology.

There was a bar at the bottom under the Worlds Menu noting the Jump Power remaining of the device. Currently it was a crimson line from one end of the screen to the other. "Okay, I'm guessing that means full power."

On the next tab under the Worlds tab was one listed as Targeting Data, which when opened showed Planet Earth with longitude and latitude. He was amazed at the detail until he noticed the Google symbol in the corner where the vambrace was tapping into the satellite network… Which while not nearly as amazing was still a good use of technology.

Bemusedly he punched in the address of his friend John and the device zoomed in, revealing John's house as shown by Google Earth somewhere in the midwest. With a shrug and a deep breath he pointed the device like they did in the pilot and hit the portal button…

A glowing blue circle which looked like it was ripped off from the Portal game (probably another reason the pilot episode failed) appeared with a woosh in the middle of his garage, and through the opening in the portal he could see John staring in shock as he reached down and lit up a cigarette. "Hi?"

Charles waved. "Hi, John!"

"I appear to be, yes," John replied with forced casualness, brushing his short black hair streaked with grey back with a free hand.

"That's only a Marlboro you're smoking, John."

"And this shit's as expensive as fuck, when do you think they're gonna get the prices down?" John tried to change the subject to something normal.

"Probably when the government stops being dicks and tacking on sin taxes," Charles replied with a snort.

"So, never in other words."

"Strictly 12th of, yep. So… take three steps back and one to the left."

John glared at him but obliged, wondering what the hell was going on as his internet buddy Charles stepped through the glowing disc and into his livingroom. Never mind the several thousand miles between the two places.

"So, how you doing, Charles?" he asked taking a deep drag off his cig.

"Oh, I'm fine… Got a new toy," Charles deadpanned trying to figure out why John was acting like nothing unusual was going on.

"A new toy? Really, how's that working?"

"Works fine, evidently it opens glowing portals and whoever made it can expect to get sued by Valve any day now." Charles waved the bracer currently locked on his arm through the air. "Solar powered or something thingamabob that was supposedly used on that ScyFy ripoff of Stargate crossed with Sliders."

"I remember seeing that, it had promise; meaning the female aliens had big tits." John took a contemplative puff on his cigarette.

"Yep, and I figured if I didn't share you would be very pissed when you found out."

"Share what?" John asked.

"Well, this thing has a Worlds' screen… You do the math."

"Just to be positive here, I'm not hallucinating the whole portal thing?" John asked cautiously.

"Nope, I really did take a step from my garage and end up in your living room."

"Oh good, I was afraid I was gonna end up somewhere in a padded room in an 'I-love-me' jacket again. Still, the pudding was nice." John sighed and some of the tension went out of his frame. "But yes, if I found out you had a wand of adventure and did not include me I would break your nose and sit on you until you apologized; and I am not a small man. Possibly a small island, but not a small man."

"Right, so I have a function where I can teleport on this world… and a function where I already set this world and my house as home."

"So, you're not a complete idiot planning on getting us lost in all of space time, good to know," John said cheerfully.

Charles gave John a pointed look, "Okay, get the stuff you need from your house and come to my house. I'll get adventuring stuff together from my place and then we'll go on an excellent adventure that hopefully won't turn into a bogus journey."

"Fine, but I'm Bill."

Charles shrugged nonchalantly. "Oh, and this thing is a nifty computer but bring your tablet with you… We'll load it down with all the neat survival books so we can have more than one copy with us, just in case."

"I don't have a tablet, I have a Nook!" John argued as he always did, not wanting his precious to be lumped in with the new fad.

"It's rooted, it still counts." Charles stuck his tongue out and stepped through the portal to his garage leaving it open for the moment so John could come through when he had the stuff he wanted to bring with him. Looking down at the vambrace he could see that the portal didn't seem to be taking up much energy and looking the device over it had USB port. Shrugging he plugged the USB charger from his tablet into the device. A cheerful charging screen came up.

"Okay, solar charger for nifty portal device will work… So will charging it from a wall mounted usb charger… And it seems to have a solar option of its own as well. This thing evidently was designed to be easy to charge. Which is good."

Charles shrugged and put it out of his mind for the moment and went over to the gun safe in the garage and punched in the code to open it and grabbed his bug out bag from the bottom before pulling out a selection of firearms to take with them. "Going to alien worlds unarmed? Not happening."

His bug out bag was a large internally framed backpack and was packed with everything necessary to survive in a bugged out state. He'd earned an 88 on the Dungeon Crawl Preparedness Quiz and fully intended to make use of that.

A few minutes later John stepped through the portal and into his friend's garage wearing a Navy issue set of foul weather coveralls, his flight deck boots, a black leather jacket, and had a large grey backpack slung over his shoulders. "I'm ready."

Charles looked him over, "So, what do you have by way of weapons or am I outfitting you?"

"I've got a short handled sledge hammer and a couple of knives, but if it goes boom that would be you."

Shrugging Charles opened the gun cabinet again, "What do you want? What do you actually know how to use?"

".45 Modified to fire .38 rounds so you can fit more to a clip."

"I don't have one, next."

"Okay, a .38 or a .45 then?" he asked hopefully.

"Alright, I have a .38 Chief's Special revolver here if you'd like."

"Ooh, I like revolvers they look cool and I've watched far too many cowboy movies!" John exclaimed with a grin.

Charles just shook his head and passed John the box containing the pistol and a box of ammunition. "There's 50 rounds in the box, the pistol is loaded and…" Charles trailed off and dug through the gun cabinet before making a satisfied "Aha!" and handed over three speed loaders for the pistol.

John loaded the speed loaders and then broke the rest of the ammunition up between various pockets. "Thanks."

"Want a long gun?" Charles asked.

"Nope; no depth perception. At long distances I can't hit shit. Got a plinker?"

"Sure, I have a couple of .22 pistols here." Charles handed him another pistol this one a Ruger semi-automatic in a shoulder holster. "There's four clips to balance out the pistol on the other side of the holster and one magazine in it. So that's fifty rounds loaded… and here's another two boxes."

John put one box in his backpack and put the others in various pockets. "Just in case we run into something small or we need to hunt Thumper… Or get really bored. It's to discourage things with tentacles ideally."

Charles snorted and picked up his Tanfoglio 10mm and belted it with it's holster around his hips, checking each magazine and slotting one up into the pistol and the other six into ammo pouches on the belt.

"Okay, hand weapons… You said you had a sledgehammer…"

"Short handled and it works well as a lock pick," John stated.

"Alright, I'll carry my machete then…"

"Light weight, good for plant matter… They don't make them heavy enough anymore, you're going to want to carry a hand axe."

"This is military issue."

"Exactly, it's lightweight and used for plant matter not people," John explained.

Charles grumbled and redid the straps to hook it back to his backpack before walking outside to the woodpile and picked up the very sharply honed hand axe. "Okay, I got an axe, you happy now?"

"That depends, are you bringing sanity?" he asked cheerfully.

"Fuck no, that bitch left town."

"Then we're good, because any sane person would not be doing this." John stated firmly.

Charles shook his head and slung his 10mm carbine over his shoulder, tucking four boxes of ammunition into his bug out bag and four spare magazines into a thigh pocket. "Okay, I have a long gun, a pistol … various melee tools. One of which you don't approve of…"

"I didn't say I don't approve of it, just that I don't approve of using it for chopping on flesh. It only works for plants and lightweight ones at that. We're probably over thinking all of this. But still, better safe than chewed."

"Are we ready?" Charles asked seriously.

"I'm ready…" John admitted, unable to think of anything else he had that he should bring off the top of his head.

Charles nodded and then blinked before setting his bug out bag back down and strapping on his camelbak before picking it back up and cinching the straps that held it tight. "Okay, I have food and water and several means to cleanse water… What do you have?"

"I have a box of frozen corn dogs and half a case of cold Mountain Dew. That's in case we get stuck overnight or something."

"Okay…" Charles trailed off, then shrugged. John would be John and frozen corn dogs were in general much better than the survival food he was carrying and Mountain Dew had more flavor than water.

"Ooh; one last thing. Open a portal up to my livingroom, I forgot one crucial thing."

Shrugging Charles hit the button to open the portal to John's livingroom.

John stepped over to his computer hit Internet History and then Clear. "Can't be too careful, you know - just in case."

Charles chuckled and patted his bag, "My computer is coming with me."

"Yeah, but you won't get a good wifi signal… Or if you do I'll shit myself."

Charles winced and closing his eyes tightly shook his head for a minute to get THAT image out of his mind's eye. "That's horrible."

"That is what as known as an EXPRESSION; it means surprised, shocked, borrowing your system to check my email."

Charles grinned and opened the targeting tab on his vambrace.

"I say we put this portal in the middle of nowhere on the Earth before we step out… Rather than releasing a stream of zombies into your house," John interrupted him before he could activate it.

Charles blinked and nodded. "Alright, to the camaro. We'll go to the storage unit. It's made of steel, it's empty, and it's paid for."

"There's a better way to do this rather than using it somewhere in the US… You can get anywhere on Earth with that sucker right?"

"Sure…" Charles said, trailing off.

"Chernobyl," John told him with a grin.

"What?!" Charles exclaimed.

"We're not going to stick around there very long and it's not going to have enough time to really affect us. Just don't eat or drink anything while we're there," John said guessing what Charles would say.

Charles pondered this for a few moments then pulled up Google Earth via the vambrace and zoomed in on an abandoned amusement park far from the power station, but still within the cordon area of Chernobyl and opened the portal. "Quick, I don't want my house irradiated."

"Listen, the radiation level has really died down… Just watch out for the wolves."

Charles pushed John through the portal and then stepped through himself, closing it behind them. "Okay… lets try this again…" He opened the targeting tab.

"Try TSR-X1," John suggested.

Shrugging Charles punched in the numbers and blinked when a portal successfully opened. "Did you just give me a D&D module product code?"

"It worked didn't it?" John asked.

"Yeah I suppose so," Charles said not surprised that John surprised at anything the crazy fanfic writer came up with anymore… or trying not to be at any rate.

"Besides, at least in one version one of the module one of the dinosaurs had a Ring of Regeneration in it's stomach," John said intently stepping through the portal into the sweltering heat heat of the tropics.

"I hope to holy hell, that 10mm hot loads work well on dinosaurs," Charles growled following him onto a pristine white beach in a far off reality.

"They're just big lizards," John waved it off.

"Yes, I know this… But … I feel like I should have brought one of my heavier rifles instead of a pistol caliber carbine."

"Huh, that probably would have helped a bit."

Charles glared at John then shook his head, "What's done is done; it holds more ammo anyway and hits like a .41 Magnum pistol out of my pistol… So the 16" barrel will work quite well enough at short to mid range."

John pulled out his Nook. "Where is the map? I'm not Dora here," he muttered bringing up a copy of the TSR module.

Charles shook his head and chambered a round into his carbine, also working the slide on his pistol to chamber a round and took the safety off on the rifle and made sure it was on for his pistol.

"This map sucks ass, there's not a decent map for this module. They always assume the DM is going to herd you where you need to go." Two ghouls appeared almost as if summoned, their feet crunching in the loose sand of the beach the two were on and drawing Charles' attention, as John continued looking through the module.

Charles drew a bead on the first one's head as they got to about 30 yards away and squeezed the trigger. BAM! A dull thunderclap exited the barrel of the weapon and downrange the ghoul's head was met by a high powered slug and turned into a gaping ruin on the exit side. "We've got company!" Charles announced as he drew a bead on the second one as it ran toward them, squeezing the trigger and making another canoe out of the head of the beast.

"Can't you kill those things any quieter? I'm trying to find the right entry dammit!"

"Hey, I'll build a fucking silencer when we get back. Put these in until then." Charles handed over a pair of shooting ear plugs, designed to dampen extremely loud sounds.

"Just warn me before you fire!" John replied not wanting to compromise his hearing in the dangerous new world they standing on.

"These earplugs are designed for firing ranges, you can hear conversation it just dulls the roar of the guns." Charles wandered over and searched the undead mooks who dared to trouble them. "Okay, wow… In D&D land, we're getting screwed… Wait a minute no the hell we're not, I just spent maybe couple of bucks and we got 50 platinum, 130 gold, 212 silver and 93 copper."

A beep from the bracer indicated that the steel flask one had was a Flask of Infinite Water and the Bracers taken off the other one were Bracers of Armor +4.

"Wow, these ghouls must have been part of some adventuring party before they became ghouls; in the inner pouches were tons of money and they two magic items. Too bad they didn't have any armor or weapons on them."

"Too bad they didn't have any armor or weapons on them, they'd have probably been valuable magic items," John spoke up.

"One had a pair of bracers of armor +4. Speaking of, how do you want to split this up?" Charles asked curiously.

"You wear the armor, I'll duck behind you. I hereby dub thee tank."

"You're all heart John," Charles drawled and looked at the bracers before shaking his head. "I can't put both bracers on, looks like you get the armor."

"Put them on your shins. It's magic, it doesn't have to make sense."

Charles snorted and tried putting the bracers on his shins, which surprisingly enough seemed to work and he saw that they were providing defense in the menu on the vambrace. "Okay, that worked… And we have infinite water… now we just need one of the various infinite food items."

"Do they come in corn dog?" John asked.

"Not that I know of," Charles admitted.

"Then they do not have infinite FOOD items," John said firmly, his devotion to food you didn't need silverware or dishes for well known to Charles.

Charles split the coins into roughly equal amounts and gave John one of the piles. "Here, this way if one of us goes splat the other one doesn't lose everything. But I recommend you grab my ammo pouches and the rifle and pistol if it comes right down to it."

"I'm also going to have to use the axe to cut through your arm because the machete is just not going to work to get that bracer off you," John deadpanned.

"You do know that they use machetes to cut peoples heads off all the time in Africa, right?"

"This is not Highlander. They have those people restrained and it takes them quite a few strokes," John pointed out.

Charles shrugged. "Okay, which way are we going oh master of the map?"

"Inland," John said pointing into the thick foliage just up the beach.

Charles sighed and headed in off the beach after loading the two expended shells into a pocket and reloaded the magazine. "Alright."

"Inland," John repeated as he wiped sweat from his forehead, "and man it's fucking hot."

"Take off the jacket."

"I like having blood INSIDE my body and if we find a ring of heat resistance I'm stealing that too. Or is it a ring of warmth? It keeps you around 60 degrees regardless, I recall."

Charles shrugged. "There's a reason I'm wearing a thick denim jacket instead of my 10lb leather trenchcoat."

"I'm just saying I remember this module and I asked for that .22 caliber pistol because I remember the size of the mosquitoes."

"You could have told me to bring another one… I own three." Charles sighed.

"Well you seemed amused when I wanted one."

"I should have grabbed one of them also, I just didn't think about it. I'll remember next time. No point using up 4d6 ammo vs goblins and low HP shit…" Charles muttered as they continued onward through the jungle like terrain.

"See if your pip boy shows a map or anything, you can't get directions from this fucker and my cellphone is not helping a bit, unlimited anywhere my ass!" John bitched.

Charles flipped through the screens on his PipBoy. "Okay, it shows an inertial map and has mapped everything I've walked… No actual map of the whole island."

"That helps, just not as much as I'd hoped. Let me read through, what are we looking for?"

Charles stood watch as John flipped through the module again. "Holee shit, there's some dragons on this island. Note to self, stay in the trees. Hey, there's some neanderthals on this island, we could kidnap some of those."

"Why?" Charles asked looking at John curiously.

"It'd make Chernobyl more fun, just think of what it would do to the people who worry about radiation damaging their DNA."

"I'd rather not import stinky, hairy neanderthals… to our Earth."

"Oh come on, we got plenty of space. That area's empty."

"Maybe if we come back with tranq guns. Mine makes canoes," Charles replied. "You didn't look at the skulls of those ghouls did you?"

"Nope, not what was left of them anyway I was busy reading."

Charles shrugged and was very happy he had put on surgical gloves before searching the undead.

Three dryads slowly melded out of the trees and Charles smiled tentatively at them, keeping his carbine pointed down on it's sling. The elven appearing maidens in their loose simple garments approached slowly.

John muttered, "Man am I glad I erased my internet history. I say we run…"

"Why?"

"According to the module we may be made into sex slaves for 1d4 years, now normally I would not have a problem with that but I assumed we had more stuff we wanted to do here than them."

Charles nodded and the two took off, running away from the trio of trees the dryads stepped out of.

Some 10 minutes later the two of them leaned against a pair of handy trees and panted.

"I'm not in shape for this," Charles groaned.

"Neither am I. Note to self, stop smoking," John panted.

Charles nodded. "Could definitely be a good thing."

John reached into his backpack and pulled out a pair of Mtn. Dews and lit another cigarette. "But not yet."

Charles accepted the Mtn. Dew that John held out to him and both took pulls from their tasty beverages. "Okay, Mountain Dew beats the hell out of water… I vote we look for everlasting gatorades."

"Bah, those are barely better than Mtn. Dew and have no caffeine, so clearly they're deficient."

Charles chuckled and offered John one of the survival cookies from his pocket. "Here, these have 3600 calories each... Eat what you want of it right now, wrap the foil back around it and stick it in your pocket."

John stuck the entire thing in his pocket. "Not hungry." He took a puff of his cigarette. "Ahhhh."

Charles chuckled and shook his head. "Alright then…"

They continued onward cautiously… only to encounter a giant spider with a large fleshy lump on it's back sitting in the middle of an enormous web. The spider was greenish brown in color and as large as a small pony and currently had a book in between it's large front 'hands'.

Charles blinked. "We just ran into a giant, intelligent, spellcasting spider didn't we?"

John checked his Nook. "Looks like it."

The spider chittered but didn't seem inclined to bother the two as it rested in the middle of it's web.

"My vote is we leave the spider alone. Much like the bunny in the box, there is no profit in disturbing it."

"I agree, I agree quite thoroughly… But I've never heard that phrase."

"Remind me to show you the movie Con Air when we get back," Charles replied.

"Oooh!" John nodded. "That's where that was from."

They backed away and waved at the giant spider which waved back as they left it to it's book.

"Note to self, giant intelligent spiders are on this island…" Charles muttered as they continued to walk only to come out of the jungle nearby a very large lake, possibly about a mile across.

"Okay, what is in that lake, John?"

"A plesiosaur."

"What IS a plesiosaur John?"

"You remember the people who went to Loch Ness and said they saw something?"

"Yes I do, this is supposed to be Nessie?"

"Pretty much, let me read. Flesh eating, lake dwelling dinosaur with an extremely long neck and flippers in place of legs… Also a large snake-like head filled with sharp teeth. Think carnivorous Nessie."

"You want us to kill this, don't you?"

"I want the Ring of Regeneration that's supposed to be in it's guts, yes. That increases my odds of survival by a thousand fold," John said energetically.

"Oh, called dibs did you?"

"I already told you this."

"Okay, but I'm damn sure taking the next one."

"Agreed, after we get this one we gotta search for one for you. This was pretty much my idea from the get go. We go to places D&D exists and get Rings of Regeneration!" John exclaimed excitedly.

"Right… Ummm, we need bait to draw this critter out where I can shoot at it."

"Huh. I hadn't thought of that, generally it attacks anyone who gets within 15' of the lake."

"Right, but I'm guessing it has 12 or 15 hit dice… This carbine only does 4d6 a shot; it's also semiautomatic."

"Yeah… it's got 16 hit dice. Just assume max hit points and you're golden… But really you should aim for it's head. I mean, how many hit points could it's head have? 25, 30? Two well placed rounds and we're done."

"I guess… What do we use to draw the damn thing out of the lake? I need to have a steady aiming point…"

"We don't have any politicians and just when one would be handy, damn it. So, I'll throw rocks and make noise, you stay back out of range."

"How about you use that .38 when it comes out of the water?"

"I'm more concentrating on avoiding getting bit."

"Use the .22 then, if you have to drop it replacing it won't be hard. The .38 technically belongs to my mom."

"I'm not pissing off your mom; I'll piss off the dinosaur, I ain't pissin' off mom," John said resolutley.

"Thus the .22."

".22 it is."

Charles knelt down behind a tree and used it for a rifle rest taking careful aim at the area John was going to draw the dinosaur to. "Use that area over there, there is a tree that you can at least duck behind if necessary."

"Hmmm, browser history is erased…" Five ghouls appeared as John started toward the lake, attracted to the noise he was making.

"Hey John! Drag the wandering monsters to the appropriate area, we'll use the ghouls as Nessie bait!"

"I approve of that idea!" John yelled back, running past the area.

"Nessie" exploded out of the water and it's long serpentlike neck brought it's head darting down to snap up one of the ghouls.

"Fire!" John yelled.

Charles released a deep breath and utilizing the empty lung technique fired a heavy 10mm bullet straight into the dinosaur's very large visible eye. BLAM! There was a sound like a watermelon exploding at a gallagher show as the eye disintegrated under the force of a chunk of copper plated lead moving at supersonic velocities. "Damn I can't believe that worked!"

John meanwhile was running from the four remaining ghouls. "Hey, asshole! Shoot the damn ghouls!"

Charles blinked and fired semi-rapidly at the ghouls, shooting for their chests as they shambled after his running friend. With four shots the ghouls fell where they stood. Gaping holes from the carbine in their chest cavities.

"God! These stink worse than Con-goers on the fifth day of a week long convention!" John panted, flinging himself down on the beach.

Charles wandered over, carefully covering Nessie until he got close enough to put another pair of bullets into it's skull.

"You know, I'm glad you brought that axe…"

"Why?" Charles asked.

"That dinosaur is gonna be a stone cold bitch to get that ring out of it's stomach…"

"I'll make you a deal, you go digging for your ring and I'll search the undead here."

"Deal."

Charles passed John the axe along with a pair of surgical gloves, "Here," then pulled on a pair of his own.

"Yeah, I'm having a smoke first. I need to catch my breath."

Charles shook his head and chuckled as he proceeded to search the five ghouls. "14 bottles of contaminated honey; toss, common wig covered in blood that I peeled an ivory tiara off of… Keep the tiara, lose the wig… Hardtack - nasty bread that nobody would eat…. Sickle, a common farming tool… rusty as shit… Now on to the good stuff."

Charles continued searching their pouches which were filled with pounds of silver and copper coins and some miscellaneous gems. The real finds were the jewelry; a silver crown, set with gemstones, a silver pendant to match, a wrought silver pendant and a ivory tiara. "Okay, the ghouls evidently turned a royal party at some point. This place was called the Isle of Dread wasn't it?"

"Yep."

"After you fish out that ring, we're getting the hell off this rock."

"Yep, because now we can afford some proper equipment," John replied as he continued fishing for the severed arm in the dinosaur's stomach.

"How much does a ring of regeneration cost?" Charles asked.

"I dunno, fifty to a hundred thousand gold? Depending on if one is available. Might be easier just to specifically go looking for another one out of another module."

Charles reloaded his rifle after stripping off his used surgical gloves.

"Hah! I found it," John declared as he pulled a skeletal arm out of the reeking mass of the dinosaur's split intestines. "Come to papa!" he declared before washing off in the lake and taking off his surgical gloves.

"Congratulations. I just had to search the undead you had to dig in that things guts," Charles said, gnawing on a survival cookie.

"Yeah, but now nobody can say smoking is unhealthy for me," John said with a grin.

"Rings of Regeneration do that." Charles acknowledged before washing off the treasure and his hands carefully in the lake with a small bottle of dish detergent. "Is there anything else that's interesting on this island before we go home? We've got pounds of coins here along with gemstones and jewelry… I'd rather not go exploring carrying this much weight."

"The damn island's not going anywhere, and now we can afford better gear. And I am covered in dinosaur blood. Let's get the fuck out of here."

Charles and John proceeded back to the beach, avoiding a 15 foot long four foot tall bony plated monstrosity that was ambling along and eating plants. Which unfortunately channeled them into a group of six zombies who stumbled toward them, groaning mindlessly.

"Okay, more undead…" Charles muttered, taking aim and calmly firing into the group of undead who were about to be just dead.

John chuckled, firing into them as well with the .38 Special. "Whee! I killed a zombie; do you know how many people would pay to do this? I'm not saying we should start up a tour service, but this is pretty awesome. Hellsing Abridged was right!"

Charles snorted and pulled out the magazine from his carbine and reloaded it as John made sure the undead were just dead by going through execution style and capping each of them in the head.

Four ghouls attracted by the noise came out of the trees toward them. "Okay, I'm pretty sure I can shoot some of them this time," John said.

Chuckling Charles proceeded to shoot calmly at the creatures. "You know, modern firearms make short work of ghouls."

"Very and someone on this island has made a LOT of ghouls," John replied. "A lot of adventuring parties came this way and did not return, I'm thinking."

Charles pulled on another set of surgical gloves. "You know, looting these guys is a pain. I think I'm gonna turn into a lobster before I feel clean again after we're off this pirate infested undead romp of an island and I get a scalding hot shower."

"I know, it's great isn't it?!" John exclaimed with a laugh.

In response Charles threw another pair of surgical gloves at John. "Okay, you help loot then."

"I'm watching for attackers," John weaseled out of it. "Mountain Dew?"

Sighing Charles went to work. "Okay; we've got more pounds of precious metal, another handful of gems, a gold tiara set with gems, an ivory brooch, a jade ring, and a platinum bracelet set with gems… Also I found you a suit of armor."

"I suppose I can wear ringmail."

"It's ringmail +1 according to the vambrace," Charles said after taking the ringmail off the ghoul and pouring bleach all over it to disinfect it. "Put it on."

"Whee, I have armor," John deadpanned after putting it on and rearranging his equipment. "I am so getting a ring that stops this sweating-to-death shit."

Charles chuckled darkly and they returned through the portal to Chernobyl, then used another portal to get to the very seasonal and thus abandoned showers at a waterpark he knew would be empty in November.

"We clink when we move and I am so burning these coveralls," John said.

Charles nodded, "I think I'll burn these clothes also. No point tracking in possible pathogens."

"Eh, I don't think it's pathogens but with zombies you can't be too careful. I'm not starting the zombie apocalypse, by accident anyway. You have a fire pit right?"

"Yep, lets get clean."

Charles and John washed up quickly with diluted bleach and dishwashing detergent and after doing so portaled back to Charles' house to burn their filthy clothing. Relaxing with a beer near the fire pit they went through their loot.

"50 platinum pieces, 283 gold pieces, 1,970 silver pieces, 567 electrum, 650 copper… and lots of gems and jewelry… Four magic items including your ring. Two of which ensure survival."

"Just remember as long as they don't take my head, and maybe if they do, just put it back in place and wait. My ring of 'doesn't have to stop smoking' is awesome. I also don't have to quit drinking Mountain Dew!"

Charles threw the cap from his beer at John. "The only problem is we don't have a way to explain any of this precious metal."

"Smelt it down and make ingots… Then we can go back and get more… You know, we could sell a handful of these coins at various jewelry stores. They're all obviously old and authentic."

Charles shook his head, "We'll be lucky to get metal weight, they're all stamped with shit no one could explain. Except the ones that are just flat discs more or less because of time."

"Isn't that all we want? They think they're stealing historical artifacts for scrap metal weight, we get cash and better yet, we can sell it on the coasts so they can't track us. Your portals will let us pop all over the damn world. Like Sweden; Sweden doesn't ask many questions, at least according to the Germans."

"My vote is the first thing we buy, other than me a Ring of Regeneration, is a damn bag of holding for the loot or even better a Belt of Many Pockets. Because that 70 pounds of coins was bloody heavy," Charles grumbled taking a long pull of his beer.

"So was all the gear we were carrying, but at least now we know what we need a little better."

"I was just carrying survival gear in case we got stuck. Granted it was pretty heavy too."

"The question about the belt of many pockets is, can we find one? I can't recall one of them in any of the modules," John mused.

"I'm sure we can; there are whole kingdoms of mages in Mystara, which is where that module we just came from is set. Drop by the markets in Alphatia and I'm sure one or the other if not both."

"How do we find those markets?"

"Portal in and look around the capital would be my suggestion; unlike the module for the adventure the boxed sets came with decent maps."

"Google the product code and lets go," John said. "In city doesn't need a lot of armor and weapons, but how will we talk to people?"

"My guess is they'll speak English; the module is written in English the quotes from the characters are written in English… My guess is English equals common."

John shrugged. "Works for me. Now let me look up my ring…" He opened up a browser on his phone and started typing. "Bah, nada that only protects against cold," he muttered, sorting through the list of magical rings.

Charles waited for John to figure out whatever it was he was looking up, and after checking the code punched in the ISBN code for the Dawn of the Emperor's boxed set and uploaded the map before centering the portal in the capital city. "Most everything is run by magic and it's a magocracy."

"Do they arrest strangers on sight?"

"Nope, lots of adventurers there too." Charles shrugged, "we'll have to be careful and get in and get out. They'll likely assume I'm a mage what with the opening portals bit and also the dealing death with loud noises stuff… We each probably qualify as D&D sages to boot."

Charles carefully bound the coins in a blanket as well as secreting the jewelry in his bag wrapped in another. "Felt muffled coins and jewelry, who knew it'd catch on? In amongst all this not counting the water flask or the ring of regeneration or your armor or my bracers turned shin guards we have roughly 31,214 in gold."

"Wait a minute… spices. They're dirt cheap here and we can sell them for huge amounts in D&D land. So are dyes." John spoke up.

"To the grocery store?" Charles grinned wickedly.

"Check what the books say for value. Dye and alchemical solutions are also big money ventures. Mages need rare earths and ingredients we can get cheap. We can trade for something they make and cut out the middle man! Perfumes are also big money items, perfumed soap would be worth more than it's weight in gold. Old Spice could make us a huge profit."

"Yeah, but we need the stuff in glass bottles or something instead of modern plastic containers… Spices we could easily get away with just packing it in waxed paper. Or a random wooden box." Charles mused thoughtfully, running his fingers through his beard.

"Plastic is fine," John said waving it off. "We just say it's a special material to keep things from spoiling."

"Alright, well… Cloves and Pepper sell extremely well… as does nutmeg…" Charles went through the D&D book looking at spices and their prices. "Black peppercorns cost 12 bucks or so a pound, cloves cost 14 a pound… A pound of nutmeg is 13 or so bucks."

John started laughing and rubbing his hands together like he was a cartoon villain. "We portal to Sweden and sell the Tiara. Then we take that money and portal to India for bulk rate on spices and dyes."

"480 gold for a pound of pepper, nutmeg is also 480 gold a pound, cloves are 320 gold per pound… Do you have a reference for dye prices?"

"Nope, nor perfumes, so we'll buy small amounts, ten or so pounds and sell them at whatever they turn out to be valued at," John said unconcerned. "It's not really expensive to buy and we can get colors so bright they hurt the eyes that have never been seen before."

Charles nodded, "Well, I have a couple hundred bucks from my last paycheck and we can buyout the 1lb containers of spices cheap… We've got waxed paper for meat in the house, if we want to bother switching out the containers at all. I'd say it'd be a good idea… I dunno about selling the jewelry off in the modern world, but it won't take long to turn some of these blank coins into ingots in the shop and we can sell them for metal weight at the pawn shop. Gold is at 1,143 dollars and some odd cents an OUNCE right now. Ten coins make a pound - a sixteen ounce pound not a troy pound." Charles grinned wickedly and stood up draining his beer and tossing the bottle into the glass recycling pile. "Ten gold for nearly 20,000 dollars. Okay, it's 18 and change but…" Charles shrugged and headed inside to grab the acetylene torch.


	2. Chapter 2 - No Longer Workin for Peanuts

Charles grinned at John evilly, ruffling his fingers through the stack of hundred dollar bills. "Have you ever had this much money at one time?"

"Not outside of a dream…" John replied, "so, cigarettes…"

Charles shrugged and handed John five hundred bucks. "Go nuts, buy all the cigarettes you want."

"Yeah, this is good for a carton these days."

Charles snorted. "You could always just buy a pound of tobacco from a tobacco shop and boxes of tubes."

"I'm NOT rolling my own. Not with tobacco anyway."

"Alright, to Costco!" Charles opened a portal to John's house and they drove to Wichita, Kansas to the Costco…

An hour or so later they had 50 pounds of pepper, 50 pounds of cloves and 50 pounds of nutmeg and had left a very confused check out girl wondering which restaurant used that mix of spices for barbeque sauce. Charles had also purchased a large selection of waxed paper and a two wheeled cart.

John had also purchased a case of cigarettes and a selection of perfumes, perfumed soaps, and fabric dyes from the crafts department.

"It's going to be funny when you have to repackage all that dye or sand the letters off the containers," Charles commented.

"Why would I have to do any of that? I'm not trying to hide where it's from. They have no fucking clue!" John exclaimed with a grin before he drove them back to his house. "Are we going to have to put up a tent or something?" John asked curiously as a thought hit him. "Because we have a lot of stuff to sell."

"Nope, we'll just sell to a merchant house or something; they'll handle distribution and we'll take our gold or more than likely our note or whatever to a shop and get magic items for it." Charles grinned.

"Oh yes; matter of fact we should get them to do it in trade."

"In trade... what?" Charles asked, not following what John's brain had just spit out seemingly at random.

"I mean cut out the middle man. If they're a merchant house they could exchange what they want for simple items. We're looking for this this and this, here's what we have to trade. How does that sound?" John asked.

"Sounds feasible, but I'm not sure that a merchant house would be the best place to find magic items. Then again, in a country ruled by mages magic items are much less rare. I want a flying boat, dammit," Charles muttered the last sentence.

"That's not a bad idea," John muttered imagining a handy way to avoid traffic.

"It's impossible as an idea, we couldn't bring it back with us; the portal is too damn small."

"That's why they have magic to shrink stuff temporarily," John replied with a shrug.

"Shrink a 100 ton ship to get through that little bitty thing? Bah!" Charles snorted. "But it's not like it wouldn't just get shot out of the sky here."

"100 tons? That's not a boat, that's a ship, completely different matter."

"It's what I was talking about though, in any case… With the 31k plus gold we've got… at the 50k the rapid regeneration ring costs and 11k each for a belt of many pouches… We'll still have lots of money when we come back from magic land. Before we go on our next jaunt to find more stuff." Charles grinned happily. "I'm going to wrap the spices in waxed paper envelopes and seal them with wax to disguise where they're from."

"I'm telling you; sages can get away with a lot of shit," John replied firmly. "Plus no big government looking for where we got things, just traders looking for cheaper suppliers."

"Eh, it won't take long and reduces cultural contamination," Charles replied.

"This ain't Star Trek, there is no Prime Directive save the one that says we shall profit," John said.

Charles shook his head and waited as they rode along, eventually deciding to take a nap on the way back to John's place.

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0**

Eventually they had returned to John's place, where Charles had repacked his spices and the misc stuff of John's that was possible to repack in waxed paper or other materials that fit the time period. Though John laughed at him the whole time. They also loaded the coins and jewelry into a handy fire safe, loading them on the cart along with their miscellaneous gear.

"I think we're ready," Charles noted.

"Looks like it," John agreed.

"Want to take the first bit of pulling the cart? I'll cover us with the rifle."

"Sure, why not?" John grabbed the handles and Charles opened the portal which took them to the outskirts of Sundsvall, the Capital of the Alphatian Empire. The air was moist and a bit muggy as the heat of the rising sun burned off the morning mist around the medieval metropolis.

Charles warily watched the area as he lead the way, occasionally checking the map to make sure they were going the right way to get to the market. Suddenly from out of an alleyway a group of four aggressive spider-like rhagodessa attacked!

As the first one darted out of the alleyway toward them, pedipalps waving and grabbed toward John… The rifle in Charles' hands spoke almost as loudly as the cursing coming from John's mouth before he bit the leg of the beast that was holding on to him… Just as it exploded in gore from the high velocity slug that tore through it's carapace.

Before it could hit the ground another spider had grabbed him. John snatched the .38 special revolver out of his pocket and shot it three times in the face as his arm poured blood from the puncture wounds the first had inflicted. "This is NOT fucking keep away!"

Charles continued firing until there were no more spiders, the cracks from the .38 joining the louder booms of the rifle.

Soon a beautiful coppery skinned woman with long black hair ran out of the alleyway. "I'm so sorry, they broke out of their cages!"

Charles shook his head. "It was no bother, I'm sorry we destroyed your obviously valuable specimens."

John glared at Charles and muttered darkly under his breath as he prodded the holes in his arm that were seeping blood.

She apologized to John, "I'm sorry the beast attacked you."

"I'm sorry it attacked me too…" he agreed.

"If you'll excuse us we were just on the way to the market with our wares," Charles spoke up before John could get them into trouble.

"What are you selling?" the girl asked curiously.

"Spices, perfumes, and dyes."

Her eyes lit up happily. "If you would come this way, I likely can give you top prices for your wares. My father's trading company has a warehouse just this way." She waved toward the side street both she and the 'spiders' had come from.

Charles glanced at John curiously with a raised eyebrow. John nodded and they followed her willingly enough, soon arriving at a warehouse marked with a rampant Griffon in gold on a sign out front.

"What do you have?" she asked, eagerly moving toward the tarp covered wagon.

"Fifty pounds each of cloves, pepper and nutmeg… Along with numerous packages of purple, blue, and red dyes and assorted scented soaps and perfumes," Charles replied as the girl eagerly inspected each of the bundles of spices by sniffing them and went about closer examinations of the various colors and scents.

"I can give you top prices for these easily! But you'll not want to carry so much gold in a simple cart with just the two of you," she said thoughtfully.

John spoke up, "We were interested in some magical items if you know where they can be procured in town?"

"Which items?"

"A ring of rapid regeneration, two belts of many pouches, and a pair of rings of coolness…Two pouches of everlasting rations and a small bag of holding."

"That would use the majority of your payment to be sure. Are you certain you'd like to expend your profits in such a fashion?" the girl asked curiously.

"Our wares are small, and without a cart hindering us we'll be able to move faster with less attention from thieves," Charles replied.

"With the consideration that you bring your products to us for first refusal I'm more than willing to procure these items for you," the girl offered.

Charles looked at John. "Sound good to you?"

"Sounds perfect, that's exactly what we were looking for."

The girl bowed and called for a servant to come remove the cart. Charles quickly grabbed the safe and gear from the cart and waved the servant onward.

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0**

Sourcing the items took a few hours, during which they were fed well and quizzed about their travels during which they made up reasonable sounding stuff with their knowledge of the game setting. Eventually however the items were delivered and they departed, returning to their own world and Charles' garage.

"We wound up with another thousand gold out of that on top of the magical items… Though we forgot to sell off the jewelry or use any of the precious metals. They're worth more here anyway." Charles shrugged and stuffed the safe with their stuff into the bottom of the gun cabinet.

They were each wearing a ring of coolness, a ring of rapid regeneration, a belt of many pockets, and each had a pouch that provided everlasting rations. The rations didn't taste spectacular, but they'd keep them alive when combined with their flask of endless water. "I'm going to put my survival gear in my belt; it'll save a whole lot of hassle and a big backpack." Charles set about doing so while looking over at John. "What do you have in mind to do next?"

John replied without missing a beat, "Shadowrun."

"Shadowrun?" Charles raised an eyebrow dubiously.

"Shadowrun," John reiterated firmly.

"You are aware of course, that we don't really have anything to trade there?"

"What, you mean gold is of no value? When did this happen?!" John asked, deliberately being an ass.

"Okay… other than gold."

"You mean other than the most valuable thing in the world? Along with gems and jewelry and the other various things we have?"

Charles sighed. "You are just determined to be a smartass aren't you?"

"Yes, yes I am," he said with a grin.

"What precisely do you want from Shadowrun, John?"

"Cyberware! Well, bioware really."

Charles ran his hand down his face at this response. "We'd be SINless; do you know of a cyberdoc that can put in good cyberware. I'm talking alpha to delta grade cyberware now, that's actually trustworthy?"

"No, not remotely. We don't know anybody! We've never been there. That's why we're going."

"We need to do some research… Splatbooks are our friends I suppose." Charles sat down on a chair and grabbed his Shadowrun book off the shelf.

"What is SINless by the way?"

"It means someone who isn't in the system; we'd be assumed to be Shadowrunners or treated like someone without a Social Security number now… To simplify the explanation," Charles replied.

"Like an illegal alien?"

"No, like we're from the wrong side of the tracks or people whose parents lived off the grid their whole lives."

"Well, money talks… all we need is a doctor who wants money or is afraid of the consequences of fucking up. Or we get SINs," John replied.

"We could get fake SINs… Or just look up and find a good cyberdoc mentioned in the books."

"Let's go with that one." John grinned. "But first we need to pay our bills."

"I'm calling my boss and telling him where to shove my dead end job," Charles replied. "We made 18 thousand dollars selling one pound of gold. That's more than I expected to make all year."

"So now all we have to do is make sure we can be safe while doing this," John replied.

"What do you call unlimited food, unlimited water, a ring of regeneration and modern weapons?"

"A good start," John replied.

Charles raised an eyebrow eloquently. "Elaborate."

"Subdermal implants, increasing our healing rate, our strength, our resistance to damage. Low light vision, enhanced hearing, boosted reflexes. Not to mention their gun selection… how about a handgun wired to you that connects directly to your optic nerve for targeting data?"

"You mean a smartgun link... Wouldn't suck, that's for sure… and they do have some very nice guns." Charles grinned. "We'd still need to find a good street doc for the rest of what you're talking about. Along with some serious nuyen and I don't know how much gold is worth there."

"If not gold, then gems, if not gems then… magic. What would a street doc pay for a bracer of potions that would heal his patients who paid him a lot or he was in danger of getting shot for failing? They know magic, just not the kind we have access to."

"I don't know how well cyberware or bioware either one is going to react to rings of regeneration or vice versa."

"Yeah, I'll get bioware cultivated from my own cells and let it heal before I put the ring back on. But it's magic not science, it's not going to try and heal me based on DNA."

"It'll take MONTHS to heal on it's own, you know that right? I thought that's why we went after rings of regen first?"

"Fine, I'll go with something simple and see how it reacts first," John replied. "Fuck, months really?"

"Yup, well… Weeks or months." Charles passed John a copy of Man and Machine.

"Well first we need to pay our bills and set up a convenient excuse for the money we have that the government won't think we're drug dealers for," John said absently as he read the book, his sentence structure even more tangled than usual.

"That's going to take all week," Charles replied as he thought of how to work that out and who he knew that could be trusted to cover where the money was coming from, mostly family.

"Get it done in advance and we can relax and not worry about it for the rest of the year," John pointed out, looking up from the bioware catalog he was considering.

"True, plus I do want to get some more stuff off Ebay that would help with what we're doing, just some common sense stuff, that anyway one camping deep in the woods would know to bring along just in case. Plus a kevlar liner for my trenchcoat," he agreed.

**A week later...**

"When should we kidnap Xander?" John asked out of nowhere.

"Why are we kidnapping Xander?" Charles asked dubiously.

"Because the fic I'm reading just completely and utterly fucking sucks!"

"So we should jump into the Buffyverse into a specific fic and kidnap Xander for his own good?" Charles asked dubiously.

"And our amusement," John agreed.

"Okay, what's the fic number?" Charles asked curiously.

"5558675," John read off. "Why?"

"Because if TSR product codes work we should be able to hit fics with something similar, or it might not work, only one way to find out." Charles shrugged and punched the numbers into the portal generator, reaching over and grabbing his kit negligently.

"Hold on! We're not going yet, we're just making sure it works," John interjected.

Charles huffed and continued setting his gear in place, including a concealed carry holster and a quick access holster normally for pepper spray that he stuck a butane soldering torch with a simple click and burn interface in.

"Seriously, there's a stupid amount of vampires and demons running around! A little preparation would be a good idea," John continued, "like a sun sword, some grenades… maybe a flame thrower."

"So we should jump into Fallout and steal this kit? Or maybe Warhammer 40k?"

"Oh hell no! We should never go to either one of those!" John looked horrified.

"Why not? I like the idea of going to Fallout… If we go to Warhammer 40k it's just to steal stuff, not to stick around afterward. Just imagine what a simple lasgun would do to a vampire or demon. Plus, you can recharge the batteries by throwing it in a fire!"

"There are demon gods paying close attention to humanity, the entire galaxy is at war and they have NO sense of humor."

Charles shrugged. "This is true."

"Anyway, the point of divergence for this story is Xander didn't dress as a common soldier for Halloween…"

"And? This happens a lot…"

"He dressed as one of the doctors from MASH, so the author gave him a drinking problem and made him angst all over the place. I swear to god there was a scene I didn't know if it was him or Angel!" John ranted.

"And we want him why?" Charles raised an eyebrow.

"We can rebuild him; stronger, faster, better! Less emo!"

"Sounds like waaay too much work, the way of the emo prick is the way of hell," Charles intoned solemnly.

"We're not going to be the ones doing the work, he will," John said with an evil grin.

"So? We'll have to tolerate him, and this right here…" Charles waved his hand around the area, "this is an emo free zone."

"We're not going to bring him here!"

"Where then? The Per-verse?"

"Do you have the code for that? No, nevermind." John quickly waved it off, obviously heavily tempted.

Charles grinned. "I can pull it up."

"No, no, we're dealing with emo Xander first."

Charles frowned darkly. "Why?"

"Because this writing offends me…"

"I could just open a portal to the author and you could beat them with a wet carp or something," Charles offered.

"Tempting, but no."

Charles rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Well I guess he at least can build us a still."

"I was thinking of taking him zombie hunting. Or rather ghouls…"

"Most of the Doctors on MASH were pacifists and hated guns… How are we going to manage this? Give him a stick?" Charles asked.

"No, what we're going to do is give him a gun and have him face ghouls. Profitable and entertaining." John grinned.

"You're demented. What if this emo prick dies?"

"Then we kidnap a Xander from a world far worse than that and drop him in it without telling him. He saves the world and gets a better one, no one knows the difference." John nodded thoughtfully.

"You're making my brain hurt."

"And how is that different from normal?"

"Okay, we have a very much OOC Xander… I like normal Xander… and you want me to tolerate one that's Xander in name only for how long?"

"I dunno I figure it shouldn't take more than a couple of hours."

"For me to shoot him or for him to grow a pair?" Charles asked with a raised eyebrow.

"For him to grow a pair, because as is the Zeppo episode is gonna be the last episode of that universe, since he's in no condition to take care of that situation."

"Or we could just kill the zombies and be done with it. Stupid writer equals stupid story…"

"Yeah, but where's the fun in that?" John asked.

"Where's the fun in any part of this? Unless I get the fool to build me a still?"

"Fine, first we straighten out his personality then we have him build you a still." John shook his head.

Charles shrugged. "Alright, where did you want to take him to hunt ghouls? The Isle of Dread again?"

"Yep, we ran into fuck tons of them there."

"Okay, I still have the coordinates. We'll go from Sunnydale, I don't want the emo to contaminate my place," Charles said firmly and picked up his rifle, tucking it away under his new kevlar lined trenchcoat with lexan plates. "You know, I think we should get some of the boots that allow you to carry an additional 50lbs before encumberance next time we go to a D&D land on a buying expedition… and maybe some potions."

"Actually, we'll probably be going there after we get him straightened out."

"Good, no sense in me having 10 pockets stuffed with 10lbs of spices each without it," Charles replied.

"Besides, we can make him carry all the gold."

"As if!" Charles snorted with disdain. "Maybe we'll find some magical weapons this time around."

"We can buy some this time around."

"Yeah, I'll pack more spices." Charles nodded and went to packing more spices into his belt of many pockets. "I think that 15 pounds of nutmeg ought to do it. Or should I bring 20? I really love Costco." Charles went ahead and stuffed another five of the pockets in his belt with 10 waxed paper 1lb containers of spices each.

"Okay, here's the plan… We grab him, bag him, dump him, and make him fight ghouls and zombies," John said.

Charles shrugged and grabbed a .22 pistol and added it to his loadout this time along with a brick of ammo. "For mosquitoes. What do you think for this emo Xander you're so enthused about, shotgun, rifle, or pistol?"

"Definitely handgun, he at least was issued one in MASH and had to qualify with it," John replied.

Charles nodded and pulled out a .45 and five spare magazines he'd acquired at a gun show. "You want a .45 this time or want to risk my mom's wrath again with the .38 wheelgun?"

"I'll take the .45, thanks."

Chuckling Charles passed John the other .45 he purchased along with five spare magazines and a couple of boxes of ammunition. "Here, do you want a long gun this time or just the same loadout barring the wheelgun?"

"I wanted a revolver," John whined.

"I thought you wanted a .45, .45s don't come in wheelguns."

"Sure they do!"

"Yeah, but I didn't find one. Plus they're a bitch to load, you need moon clips to hold them in place they aren't a rimmed cartridge."

"Fine, I'll take something with a clip."

"I just handed it to you." Charles smirked. "I still say we should go to a battle site in 40k where the Imperial Guard fought somebody…"

"Why?" John asked.

"To loot the weapons… Lasguns would be fun. They're wimpy as hell in 40k, but in D&D they'd be great!" Charles said, rubbing his hands together.

"We'll go to Star Wars sometime; the Force is not as big a prick as the Emperor is."

"Wait… you mean I can stick Jar Jar in a blender?! Awesome, lets go right now!" Charles said with a wide grin.

"No, they probably have too many people trying to do that already; but, we can get lightsabers."

Charles shrugged. "Be a nifty conversation piece in any case. I'd rather have a starship though."

"Couldn't fit one through the portal."

"Who said I was coming back?" Charles asked dubiously.

"Come on; what does Star Wars have that we don't have right here? Wait, nevermind don't answer that. You can go there and come back repeatedly."

"Did you know there are like 14 or 15 flavors of Twi'lek and you gotta catch em all?" Charles grinned.

"Okay Ash."

"Groovy," Charles replied in his best imitation of Bruce Campbell. "Hey, we could go to Boot Hill… Or Gamma World…"

"No! No we couldn't!"

"Why not?" Charles asked, with a grin.

"Now you're just trying to get us killed," John groaned.

"We have better armor than they do," Charles pointed out.

"Yeah, but we don't armor our heads though and they're very good shots. That's why I feel safe going to Star Wars; those clones can't hit shit. Anyway, back to the topic at hand. We can corrupt Star Wars later."

"So I shouldn't mention my plan to go to Star Trek and steal a replicator to install on my starship in Star Wars?"

"That's not a plan, that's just common sense," John said.

"Or my plan to buy a backpack mini-fusion generator and install it in my house? Along with a replicator to make more ammo and guns," Charles joked.

"That's also common sense, but back to the topic at hand!"

"I was avoiding the topic at hand."

"I noticed. Dial the damn portal!" John stopped and took some deep breaths. "Wait, I planned on bringing a lot of stuff with us."

"Like what?"

"You know; weapons, armor that sort of thing. I hadn't made any exact plans that's why I wanted to talk about it first," John replied.

"Alright." Charles sat down and opened a beer. "What do you think we'll need? I have my whole survival kit in my belt of many pockets, along with the rations pouch and water flask… I'm wearing the bracers of protection +4 on my shins… Your ring mail is right over there."

"I was thinking we'd get some stuff blessed."

"By priests on this Earth? Doubt it'd be effective."

"Uh, no," John admitted.

"Where then?" Charles asked.

"Someplace where it is effective."

"Blessings have a time limit in D&D land," Charles replied.

"Think we could get to Hellsing and find Father Alexander?" John asked.

"NO!" Charles replied unequivocally.

"Just a thought."

"Look, I have a lovely butane torch that you click and it burns blue; it's the size of a pen… Great for Buffy vampires, there's another one on the table over there… I bought like four of the damn things, about 10 dollars each at Home Despot or Lowes. Other than that, you can pack a flare gun or some pen flares?"

"I suppose that does make more sense."

Charles grinned. "I already planned for the Buffyverse."

"At least somebody did, because I was kinda winging it."

"Box of pen flares in the left hand drawer of the table." Charles pointed.

"I like it, I can see that being useful," John mused.

"Stuff a pocket full of them then. I bought a case."

"Then I guess we are good."

John grabbed some flares as well as the butane pencil torch Charles pointed out and a couple of butane refills. "Lets go."

Charles dialed in the portal and they stepped through into the Sunnydale night.

**0o0o0o0o0o0**

"Couldn't you have dialed the day time?"

"Bitch bitch bitch, this was your idea," Charles replied.

"Where are we gonna find him?" John asked.

"Hmmm, it's night time on the Hellmouth… Either the Bronze or the High School Library?" Charles guessed.

"Actually this is a moping emo Xander. So where would a moping emo Xander be?"

"His parent's basement listening to country music?" Charles asked.

"Unfortunately I think you're right. Fortunately I brought the key to the basement."

"Okay…" Charles trailed off dubiously and shrugged and headed in that general direction. They had gone perhaps 60 yards when a group of three vampires in game face came out of the nearby alleyway. "You three mooks, fuck off!"

The vampires of course charged.

The first one caught a pen flare right in the crotch. The second tried to deck Charles but missed by a mile. "Huh, guess you can't hit shit huh?" It responded with a backhand that sent him into a building. "Fuck!"

John meanwhile was laughing so hard he nearly missed with his own flare. Thankfully, vampires in Buffy were extra flammable. Leaving only the one Charles was currently kicking in the crotch with Harley Davidson steel toed boots. "Was that necessary?"

"Yes," Charles replied darkly and stuck his quickly drawn and ignited butane torch in the moaning vampire's eye.

"How did I get to be the sane one in this conversation?"

Charles shrugged. "I'm glad we have rings of rapid regeneration, that bastard cracked my collarbone."

"You gelded him, I think you got your revenge with those shitkicker boots."

Charles shrugged again as his collarbone knit itself back together. "Shit happens. I told them to fuck off."

"Fine, but next time… just set them on fire straight away, we don't have time to start fights with every demon in Sunnydale."

"I set one on fire right after I told them to fuck off," Charles grumbled.

"Fine, I'm not going to argue, just see vampy burn vampy," John said looking for a street sign. "Any idea where Xander lives?"

Charles sighed and pulled up a map of Sunnydale on his tablet. "Okay, it's this way." He headed off following the signs and checking the map every so often, until they reached the correct address.

John looked at the slightly rundown house in a decent neighborhood but poorly taken care of as if the occupants had given up maintaining it.

"Okay, this obviously is based on fanon instead of canon…" Charles muttered while rolling his eyes toward the heavens. "Save me from idiot authors. Are you sure we can't kneecap the idiot who wrote this tripe?"

"I'm going to leave a bad review of 'Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back' on Movie Poopshoot dot com in their name and let nature take its course," John replied.

"Works for me, remind me when we get done with this next D&D bit that we need to go to a game set in the 1920s." Charles said, making a note in on his tablet to that effect.

"Why the 1920s?"

"Because there are lots of neat guns on the open market in the 1920s. I've always wanted a real Thompson subgun. Oh, and we need to stop in the 1960s to pick up a American 180 subgun also," Charles continued.

"Mob run territory, lots of speakeasies, cops are crooked and evil… Yeah, we should be fine, rings of regeneration mean never having to worry about being perforated."

"Plus we have armor we bought to go to Shadowrun with… our bullet proofing is pretty good." Charles continued. "We'll upgrade in SR though."

"Sounds good," John remarked while entering the yard and walking around to the backyard, listening for the faint sounds of country music and finding the door to the basement.

"Just remember the basement has it's own door," Charles said as he wandered along in John's wake, his eyes warily scanning the environment for more vampires.

"Yeah, I know," John replied taking out his key to the basement door and raising it up.

"Hammer comma sledge… Universal key," Charles muttered.

John brought it down lightly to tap the door twice and waited for Xander to answer it. "It's the burglars," John called cheerfully as Xander answered the door only to get smacked in the head with a sledgehammer and fall down with a thump. "OK, you open the portal, I'll drag him through."

"We don't have any healing potions, you know that right?" Charles asked curiously as he opened the portal.

"He'll be fine, I'll loan him my ring so he doesn't get any permanent brain damage," John said grabbing him under the arms and pulling him up so he could drag him through the portal.

Charles shrugged and followed them to the Isle of Dread.

John dropped Xander on the ground and took off his ring and slipped it on Xander's finger. "There, he should be fine in a minute."

Charles shrugged and pulled his rifle out, setting it on the three point sling and getting ready for wandering monsters by rearranging his other equipment into his combat configuration instead of concealed in belt of many pockets configuration.

A moment later immense thuds shook the area as a large dinosaur thudded out of the jungle and looked around.

"Okay, another herbivore… We'll just avoid it."

John nodded and shook Xander awake.

"Huh, wha?" the dark haired teen asked blurrily before spotting the dinosaur and freezing in place.

"Welcome to Jurassic Park, Mr. Harris," John said solemnly.

Charles snorted and chuckled, lighting up a cigarette and puffing contemplatively.

John grinned and lit a cig as well, and then pulled out a cold can of Mountain Dew from one of his pouches, a few pieces of ice tumbling out as he did so.

"Dry ice would work better," Charles noted.

"Yeah, and stick to my hands, plus they tend to make the can's explode," John replied.

"What the fuck is going on?" Xander demanded.

"We kidnapped you," John said cheerfully, taking out a handgun and loading it. "Ever heard the phrase 'The world will end not with a bang but a whimper'? Well that whimper isn't going to be your lame emo one. We are going by do-or-die here. You either pull your head out of your ass and 'do' or you die and we find a Xander with a set of balls to take your place and save the world."

"In other words, we're officially the heavy boot in your ass to motivate you," Charles said, pulling out a military issue canvas holster with a 1911 in it along with several magazine pouches and tossed it at Xander's feet. "Here is your armament."

"I'm lost," Xander said, hands automatically reaching for the gun and checking it's condition even as his eyes darted around the beach.

"We kidnapped you to give you the boot in the ass you needed to wake up from whichever MASH doctor you dressed as' memory induced melancholic bullshit. Buffy may not acknowledge it, but without YOU she'd have died a year ago in the Master's cave and Kendra would be the Slayer on the Hellmouth. You need to wake up and smell the fact you're a valuable part of the team."

"Daniel Pierce," Xander said softly.

"Daniel Pierce? Must be a different version of MASH then; in our version it was Benjamin Franklin 'Hawkeye' Pierce played by Alan Alda, and he was essentially a liberal idiot." Charles puffed on his cigarette contemplatively. "Either way, he was functional at his job and with some work you can use his memories to become a damn fine surgeon some day and help your friends in the process. But before then; you have to pull your head out of your ass."

"Yeah, in other words it's time to sack up and be a man," John said while sipping on his Mountain Dew.

Xander looked dumbfounded by this brutal explanation of what they were doing and why. "So… you brought me to Jurassic Park to shoot dinosaurs with a popgun?"

"Yes, that's exactly it," John agreed. "We brought you here to kill a bunch of giant lizards for no reason. No, we brought you here to put you in danger and hope a little life and death struggle would shake you out of your funk and blow away the bullshit you've been marinating in. Of course you're in life and death situations all the time and that hasn't helped yet… Hmmm. I obviously didn't think this through enough."

Charles facepalmed, glaring over at John. "You said that this would take a couple of hours tops…"

"I say a lot of things! When did we start listening to me?"

"Okay etch a sketch for brains." Charles huffed and looked at Xander. "Okay, we've given you a pep talk and you're in a D&D Module… What are you going to do?"

The duck billed dinosaur wandered through the area again, evidently not finding whatever it had been looking for with it's walnut sized brain.

"What a majestic creature," John said before smirking and making a noise like a duck. "Quack!"

"What the fuck?" Charles glared at the critter and drew a bead on it's eyeball. "If it wouldn't just stink up the place I'd put a 200 grain hollow point through your eye. Goddamn dinosaur that quacks, my fucked up day is complete."

"Yeah, don't shoot the prehistoric platypus, they are the sort of eldritch horror that only Fred Flintstone understood how to deal with. Now where are the ghouls? This place was lousy with them last time," John muttered wondering if one could make a ghoul call and what it would look like. It worked for ducks after all.

Charles grumbled, "Inland!" He pointed at the jungle. "Mush doggies." and proceeded forward himself, muttering all the while.

Four ghouls burst out of the jungle and darted toward the three. Charles raised the rifle as he stepped behind a tree, squeezing the trigger as he did so. A sharp retort broke through the jungle as one of the ghoul's suddenly acquired a lobotomy. "I'd suggest you two start shooting."

"Two? I'm just a watcher here." John replied. "Start shooting, Xander."

Xander looked between the two of them incredulously.

"You're wasting seconds, they can clear 30 feet in six seconds," John said, puffing on his cigarette nonchalantly as he looked back at Xander.

Charles shook his head and drew a bead on another one, squeezing the trigger and creating another canoe atop a corpse.

"Will you stop killing them? If you kill 'em all he won't learn nothin'," John scolded.

Xander yanked the .45 out of his holster and double tapped the one closest to him, blowing two large holes through it's chest and sending it crashing down to the jungle floor. He then tracked to the last one remaining on it's feet and put three holes in it's chest before sitting heavily on the ground with a thud. "Okay…"

"The military training come back okay?" Charles asked curiously.

Xander nodded in stunned fashion.

"Since you're kinda in shock there, I'll handle the looting this time," Charles pulled on some rubber gloves and went to investigate the newly crafted corpses. "393 gold, 194 silver, some very rotted nobles clothing and some gemstones. Congratulations Xander, you're rich… or at least comfortably well off. Hmmm, well maybe not. Gold isn't worth nearly as much in 1998 as it is in 2014 and our money would be dated wrong."

Xander nodded dumbly.

"John, give him a smack see if he reboots… and a shot of this when he snaps out of it." Charles tossed John a pint of Jack Daniels.

John nodded and passed the bottle to the shocked teen. "Take a slug," he ordered.

Xander absently took the bottle and unscrewed the cap before taking a swig. "OK, not dreaming," he said after a minute.

"Yes, You've been kidnapped for the sole purpose of manning you up enough that you don't let the world end because your pussy hurt," John told him solemnly.

"Sand in your vag is so uncomfortable though." Charles snorted and came back over after disposing of his surgical gloves. "Ok, where next? Pull out the module and figure out some place good to loot."

"It's not a really straight forward module like that; you're supposed to wander around on the surface and fight dinosaurs. Hold on, let me find a different module." After a few moments digging through files on his Nook John declared, "Okay, take us to TSR B-1."

"What is TSR B-1?"

"In search of the unknown; it's for character levels 1-3."

"Sounds lame… I guess I can cap goblins with my .22 magnum pistol." Charles shrugged and started punching in coordinates.

"Wait, there's an entire city in this motherfucker; that one's not happening." John stopped him before he opened the portal.

"Wait, you guys can just jump wherever you want?" Xander asked.

"Okay, dungeon module B-2. The Keep on the Borderlands," John said.

"Yes, we can jump wherever and whenever we want," Charles replied.

"How about Shadowrun?" Xander asked, making John smirk at Charles.

"Three SINless guys in Seattle, sounds like the start of some sort of sitcom." Charles shrugged and went looking through his Shadowrun titles for the one he wanted.

"Well let him look for the right module while we look for the ghouls," John said.

"Wait!" Xander said excitedly. "We can go to Shadowrun?! Seriously?"

"Yes, we can go," John assured him. "And why Shadowrun?"

"Because cyberware is awesome and so are the other things you can get there?" Xander asked as if that was a stupid question.

"Yes, but what happened to all the doom and gloom?" John demanded, a bit upset his plan… sort plan, was working out... without working out.

"That was before I got the chance to put myself on a level with the demons we face night after night. Let's see them kick me out when I can hand a slayer her ass!"

Charles chuckled. "We're going to need some more loot before we attempt this. They combine magic with modern medical science at some of the hospitals in Seattle and as they say money talks and bullshit walks… Gold bars are money last I checked."

Xander pulled off a full clip and popped out the old one and slammed home the new one with a grin. "Let's do this."

Charles shook his head bemusedly and headed in a direction his map indicated they hadn't been yet. "Sure, now he's enthusiastic…"

"Here, ghouly, ghouly, ghouly!" John called out.

Five ghouls seemingly attracted to John's attempt at a mating call, appeared stealthily from the bushes to the right of the party. Or as stealthily as walking corpses could at any rate.

"That damn sure shouldn't have worked," Charles muttered, as he turned the nearest one's head into a canoe with a caress of the trigger.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, and fuck you!" John yelled firing rapidly, his .45 blowing large chunks out of two of the ghouls and one very startled looking tree.

Xander on the other hand calmly chose his shots, seemingly a different person than he'd been before this happened. Two shots per ghoul to make sure they went down and soon the three of them were the only things left alive in the clearing.

Charles chuckled. "That poor tree," he said as he pulled on a set of surgical gloves and went to work searching the ghouls. "Lots of coinage, various gems and jewelry and the true find of the century… Elven Chain +1. Which goes to the novice murder hobo."

Xander blinked. "Me?"

"Yeah, the point was to get you out of your crappy situation so you get the elven chainmail." Charles replied, taking it off the corpse and pouring bleach over it for disinfection. "I'd clean it up a bit better before you wear it next to your skin, but you can wear it over your clothes for right now easy enough."

Xander looked at the holes in the trees. "Yeah, I think John needs a pair of cybereyes and a smartlink."

"I was planning on it, thank you very much," John muttered.

"We'll probably be swapping out for smart linked guns as well, which limits us as to what sort of weapons we can acquire… We could always just make multiple stops there for ammo though."

"That limits where we can go for our ammo, at least until we hit Star Trek and beg, borrow, or steal a replicator and before that we have to go Star Wars and get some twi'leks…" John trailed off and frowned. "I mean a backpack fusion generator," he corrected himself.

Xander laughed and blinked. "Hey, can I come with you on this trip to Star Wars land?"

"Where are we in the timeline?" John muttered. "Just broke up with Cordy for giving it to Willow? Yeah, we got time to get it done and get you back."

"I never had sex with Willow!" Xander glared at John.

Charles was still going through the various books. "Yeah; with the prices we're going to need to pay we're better off buffing Xander with magic before we try to get cyberwear. Betaware is expensive and has to be custom made so we'll have to wait a while anyway."

"Harry Potter for Re'em blood?" John asked.

"Sure, sounds good to me. Let me just grab Tim," Charles muttered.

"Tim?" Xander asked with a raised eyebrow.

"He's going to be pissed he wasn't included in the adventures through time and space already; he was at work being a teacher when this started though," Charles replied.

"Who is Tim? Who are you two anyway?" Xander asked.

John replied to this question with a dead serious look on his face, "We are the few, we are the proud, we are … D&D nerds, fanfiction authors, bored of our minds with regular life. We are geeks!"

Xander facepalmed. "Why didn't you just come vacation on the damn hellmouth then?"

"Too many vampires not enough nude Buffy's, I mean not enough nude Slayers, I mean it is not friendly," John replied. "Remember, Tim's immoral and we're not to do everything he says."

Xander blinked owlishly.

A group of six more ghouls burst out of the other side of the clearing, though one tripped in a section of spiked vines and got itself tangled impossibly.

Charles dropped his tablet, cursing when the screen cracked even with the reinforced case. "Goddamn it! I liked that tablet," he snapped and opened up on the ghouls with his rifle, holing each of them multiple times without aiming for any of their heads as he took out his immense frustration on them.

"Wow, he shot those ghouls to doll rags," Xander muttered.

There was a click before Charles quit firing, and he ejected the magazine from his carbine and stuffed it into a pouch angrily before reloading. "Stupid fucking undead morons."

"Six ghouls, 22 rounds… I think he must have been pissed," John drawled and got a dirty look for his troubles as Charles stalked over to search them.

"Lots of gold and gems, some decent armor that I shot full of holes…" Charles trailed off and shrugged, "fuck the armor, two neat toys…" he unbuckled the swords from two of the ghouls, tossing one to Xander. "Catch; this is a Flaming Broadsword… The other one is a Dragonslayer Broadsword +2."

Xander caught the sword with awe in his eyes. "Wow, you've single handedly made me into a real force for good on the Hellmouth."

"No, I equipped you to be a vampire slayer who will have a good long life," Charles snorted and opened a portal home and ushered them through. "Step into my garage and we'll go collect Tim and see what he has for ideas."

Xander shrugged willingly enough and went through the portal as Charles knelt and picked up his tablet which was pretty thoroughly unusable and cussed up a storm in multiple languages.

"Just buy a new one and transfer the files over, you have the money," John pointed out. "I'd suggest getting a back up or two in case you lose one anyway."

"I'll just transfer the files to my PipBoy knockoff here… It seems fairly well indestructible."

"And remember… Tim is immoral and every suggestion should be thought about before following," John said seriously as he stepped through. "And this is me saying that!"

"I always take whatever either of you says with a grain of salt when you open your mouths," Charles deadpanned.


	3. Chapter 3 - A Friendly Stabbing

Disclaimer: No fics where we do not have express permission from the author to play around in their world will be used for crossovers. If anything is used by Mist of Shadows / Mist of Rainbows, dogbertcarroll or Godogma all of us are already involved in this fic and we don't need to be informed.

Tim looked at the trio of people in front of him with a raised eyebrow. "Where did you two run into Nicholas Brendon? Also, when did he start shaving and dying his hair?"

Xander blinked and raised an eyebrow. "Who is Nicholas Brendon?"

"He's not you but he plays you on TV," John replied.

"Pull the other one guys, Xander Harris is not from this dimension if he's even real," Tim said firmly.

"Xander, poke him," Charles ordered, handing him a broom handle.

Xander shrugged and cautiously stuck the broom handle through the portal and nudged Tim.

"Real enough for you?"

"Yeah, you bastard," Tim replied. "Worst freakin' dream ever, why did they send him not Dawn?"

"Who's Dawn?" Xander asked curiously.

"You're contaminating the time line, luckily we have no Prime Directive other than we shall profit." Charles grinned, and John snickered.

"Do I want to know where the hell you got the ability to make portals?"

"Ebay." Charles grinned wickedly.

"The world is doomed," Tim deadpanned.

"Well, step through and we'll let you know our nefarious plot."

Tim shrugged and stepped through.

Charles closed the portal behind him. "Okay, so for our next jump we're thinking Harry Potter. We snagged a previously emo Xander before the whole Zeppo episode so that world line wouldn't end because he was spending all his time drinking and moping in the basement."

Tim looked down at Charles' vambrace curiously. "That looks at least partially technological and this is way too damn lucid… fuck… fuck… and yeah… okay, how does that shit work?"

John chortled happily.

"We've been able to hit up a D&D module multiple times for gold and gems, we've become interdimensional spice traders… and we've went into an abandoned BtVS fanfic that John hated and grabbed a Xander," Charles replied.

Tim grinned. "Okay, in that case, I've got a couple of suggestions."

"Brace yourselves!" John said, grabbing a chair as Charles leaned against the wall with a raised eyebrow.

"First of all we need power, so we've got two remarkably amusing magical items that will get us power if used correctly," Tim said tapping his chin as he started planning out his assault on reality.

Xander looked at Tim dubiously. "He's sane?"

"Are any of us?" Charles asked curiously.

"One is the Black Elfstone from the Shannara series," Tim decided aloud.

Charles blinked. "Hmmm… Black Elfstone? I can't remember what that does precisely."

"Depending on the stats, it can drink a creature's life force and steal their powers, which is just about the stupidest use I can imagine for the thing," Tim admitted.

"Nixed for the moment, I'd have to reread the books before I'd be comfortable heading to Shannara," Charles spoke up.

"The real key was that it could steal a magic items power free and clear. The other items that we'd need are power stealing daggers from the show Charmed. You basically stab a witch, warlock, or demon and steal abilities… the downside is that demon abilities would need to be cleansed… however the hell you'd do that."

"Stab Mahatma Ghandi," John spoke up.

Charles shook his head back and forth. "Okay, Death Eaters in Harry Potter don't need their magic and we do."

"Exactly." Tim grinned.

Xander raised an eyebrow dubiously. "Should we even be thinking about doing this?"

"Sure." Charles shrugged. "Would you want; Lucius Malfoy for example, to keep his magic?"

Xander shrugged, "The first book is the only one I've ever read. It's the only one of the series that's even out in my world."

"I call dibs on Kreacher," Tim announced.

Charles snapped his fingers. "That's okay, we know where multiple Kreachers are. I do know Charmed and thankfully the wiki lists which episodes there are warlocks with athame we can steal."

"We can farm Kreachers… I'm already turning evil," John said slowly, "but I guess he's an evil little bastard anyway, so it's not an issue."

"Why are we going to farm Kreachers? And what are they?" Xander asked in a confused tone of voice.

"Kreacher is a dickhead house elf who got Sirius Black killed in HP canon," Charles explained shortly, "so, with some pre-emptive work on certain timelines those Sirius Black's won't die the same way."

"Who is Sirius Black?"

"Harry's godfather who was imprisoned without the benefit of an actual trial for a crime he didn't commit," Tim replied.

Xander shrugged and nodded. "What are house elves?"

"Thoughts on that one varies; some form of fae critter enslaved in prehistory by the HP mages is my guess," Charles replied. "The other theory is they are demons who can't make their own magic anymore so have to live in symbiosis with a wizarding family or edifice."

"What abilities would someone get from a house elf stabbed with one of these power stealing daggers?" Xander asked curiously.

"The ability to teleport at will; tons of other magic around a household like repairing and cleaning things or cooking magically and teleporting objects to another room have all been demonstrated by house elves," Tim replied.

"And Kreacher is an evil little bastard no one would miss," Charles finished. "Thankfully, I know of a HP fanfic where language lozenges exist, as well as multiple other types of very nice magic items that we can pick up for little to no gold in D&D terms."

Xander raised an eyebrow. "How much gold do we have access to?"

Charles walked over to a heavy chest with multiple padlocks revealed after he slid a panel open in the wall and began working the locks before kicking open the heavy steel box. "Over 300 POUNDS of gold coins thus far. Not counting the silver and copper and platinum or the weird mix that is electrum."

"My ring please," John ordered holding out his hand to Xander.

Xander shrugged and passed it back. "What did that even do anyway?"

"Ring of Rapid Regeneration," John replied sliding it back on his finger and pulling out a cig.

Tim smiled slightly. "That reminds me, I've got a couple of other things we should go after once we're done with Harry's worlds."

"First you're gonna need some weapons; Xander's going to need to hide his as well…" Charles frowned. "Mokeskin pouches all around when we get to HP-land. As a stopgap measure I'll carry extra weapons for you two. John and I have a pair of belts of many pockets." he said as he put his rifle into a pouch and went to putting Xander's pistol and belt into another pocket.

Tim asked, "Post owls? I mean they let you find people right?"

John rubbed the bridge of his nose. "We're not stabbing people's pets to try and test if we can steal their powers. By the way, who gets to stab Umbridge? Because I'm not missing out on that."

"Her magic can't be that great, go for it," Tim said magnanimously.

Charles shook his head. "I'm just going to stab a single Kreacher, and however many Death Munchkins present themselves in melee range. More or less one, if I can get away with it… I'll happily put a bullet in as many as you want though." He shrugged. "Raping and murdering people on the orders of a maniac don't bring out my warm fuzzies… They get my viking swordsman feelings up though."

"Yeah, not so much on the first one and yes on the second. I've got an idea on what to do with the dementors. We can lead them or push them through a portal to Twilight right?" Tim asked eagerly.

"Uhh, there's a lot of innocent people there, not just sparkly vampires; which I say are just faeries regardless and not the good kind that can decorate your house," John said.

"Okay, what about a zombie apocalypse world?" Tim asked.

"That's actually a good idea," John admitted.

"Even if we steal the magic from Death Eaters and Kreachers we won't be able to use it for much to start out with. Dementors may be out of our league. I'm not sure if bullets would work on them, or dragonslaying/flaming swords," Charles replied.

"Okay, our gold coins are 10 to the pound… roughly .625 ounces each, which probably makes them more valuable than the goblin made galleon." Charles pondered, "how much gold do we want to take with us?" Charles shrugged and grabbed ten one pound ingots of gold, stacking them into one of his pouches along with ten one pound ingots of silver.

"I vote we attack the graveyard at the end of Fourth Year; we can stab multiple Death Eaters there when they're all gathered together and I can shoot the rest… and in one of the HP worlds they'll have many fewer problems when we leave," Charles said.

"That's way too many Death Eaters in one place," Tim pointed out.

"I have 22 rounds of 10mm in each of these carbine magazines. We only need to stab one each." Charles shrugged.

"That works if we're just trying to kill them, they need to be alive when we stab them for powers." Tim said.

"I can shoot to wound instead of kill - most gunshot wounds aren't deadly for hours. Besides I can pull a trigger and turn the wand arm's shoulder into a bag of bloodshot shredded meat and bone," Charles stated confidently.

"Depends on how big the wound is and how long they'll survive," John said.

"That works for me, though I think we should grab the elf first so we can teleport out if there's a problem," Tim explained.

"We'd have to get permission from Sirius or something and isn't the place already under Fidelius at that point?" Charles said.

"Wait… wait… we're being stupid. We know where the S.O.B. is, why are we considering challenging the idiot when he has a bunch of other psychopathic dark wizards around him. We just need to kill him earlier and drag the rat back to the ministry and we win," Tim said suddenly.

Charles ran his fingers through his beard thoughtfully. "You mean just stab Quirrel with the dagger and then catch the rat?"

"We can make gold if we get the philosopher's stone," Tim pointed out.

"We don't even know how to use it or if it's even real!" John snapped.

"That's why we can either learn or find an alchemist," Tim said reasonably.

"There's only one alchemist in the books who knows how to make or use one," Xander pointed out, as he actually had read the first book at Willow's urgings.

"So we offer him a ticket out of HP-land for him and his wife if he teaches us how to use it. Then he doesn't have to put up with Fumblemore or the rest of the idiots hounding him about it," Charles said thoughtfully.

"We can ask anyway," John agreed, "we won't know until we try in any case."

Charles shrugged and they began to carry out the first part of their nefarious plan by setting in the coordinates for the Charmed universe in the specific fanfic they needed to grab athame from two handy warlocks.

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0**

"We don't need four power stealing daggers," John pointed out, "we just need one; running around getting addicted to stealing powers is a bad move." he reminded them.

"Having backups are always a good idea and having multiple daggers means we can adapt to changing situations and score targets of opportunity." Tim said reasonably.

"It's a safety issue; no one can use more than one dagger at a time anyway."

"Let's see how hard it is to get a warlock's athame before we start talking numbers," Charles said, "if it's easy we get multiples; if it's hard we only get two, and if it's damn near impossible… we get one."

"Works for me," John agreed lighting up a cigarette.

"How exactly are we doing this?" Tim asked, "I mean what are the details of your plan?"

"I'm going to find the episodes warlocks have appeared in and dial them up," Charles replied, "and take them out before they can interact with the Charmed cast so we can hopefully avoid any Angel of Destiny bullshit."

"Use a fanfiction story rather than canon," John suggested, "with fanfiction we can enter chapter data giving us better aim."

Tim said. "And if it's bad enough we won't care if we fuck things up."

"There's probably production codes for individual scenes," Charles pointed out.

"You already have a plan, don't you?" Tim asked John, looking faintly amused.

"Yeah; I googled warlocks and power stealing and came across a really awful slash fic." John admitted. "Two female warlocks get the drop on Cole and Leo and steal their powers."

"Let me guess; everyone turns on them having no use for two powerless mortals and they find comfort in each other's arms?" Xander asked with a shudder, recalling far too many fanfics about his own series with similarly stupid premises from browsing fanfiction sites at Charles' house.

"Bingo," John agreed, "and I'll give you bonus points for guessing what the name of the surrogate mother they got for their spawn is! I'll give you a hint, the author has her name listed as AprilSpringster104."

"A girl named April who they resort to old fashioned methods to knock up, not having the money for in vitro fertilization." Charles deadpanned.

"So you can use the daggers on Angels?" Tim asked curiously, rubbing his beard.

"I'm not going to answer that one as the answer is obvious," John replied, "however I'm pretty sure stealing an Angel's powers would taint them and we still have no way to purify powers."

"Probably," Tim agreed, "though we should look into getting healing powers at some point."

"One of the most useful powers ever," Xander said, his mind drifting off to laying on hands of his girls and … healing them.

"That would give us two in one shot," Charles said, "and if she wrote it before that Angel of Destiny crap she probably didn't include any of that. Meaning one less worry."

"Actually they have two daggers a piece." John said, "see Cole and Leo can easily handle two slutty warlocks and each disarms one but then the girls pull out …" John winced before continuing, "switchblade athames and try to stab them in the back after being granted mercy by the pair. Somehow the two sacrifice themselves to save each other, somehow each getting stabbed by the... switchblade athame."

"If you already have a plan to get four, why argue with Tim about it?" Xander asked, giving John a dubious look.

"It's dangerous and corrupting and having multiple daggers increases the chance of one of us getting poked with one on accident if nothing else." John explained, "It's better to be safe than sorry especially when dealing with powerful dark magic. That being said, I call dibs on one of the switchblades."

"I thought they repulsed you?" Charles asked amusedly.

"Blade folds up so I'm less likely to accidentally stab myself," John admitted.

"I'll take the other one," Tim offered, "I prefer easily concealable blades."

"Works," Charles agreed, "now tell me about the scene so I can figure out where to snipe them from."

Half an hour later as the two slightly chubby goth girls with too much magic slunk into an alley behind the P3…

*BOOM!*

"Headshot!" Charles declared with a smirk, having taken them both out with one shot one having followed directly behind the other into the alley.

John and Xander leapt out of the portal and ran into the alley, quickly grabbing the daggers and their sheaths tucked openly in the girl's belts and found the switchblades tucked into the back of their pants held in place by the whale tail of their g-strings.

By the time the sound of the shot had attracted attention they had jumped back through the portal and Charles had closed it.

"Waaay too much running," John said, noting that he was much less out of breath this time.

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0**

Tim sighed. "That was a lot easier than I thought it would be."

"It's not like any of us were inherently magical for the warlocks to sense us and try and take our powers. A rifle is quite effective," Charles shrugged.

"Still, it's like you missed the lecture on honor and fairness!" Tim smirked, trying to hold back laughter.

Charles shrugged nonchalantly. "I attended the lecture on Jason Bourne instead. Besides putting a bullet into some asshole warlock coming after the trio of really hot brunettes was a community service in each case."

"I'm surprised no one used the perfect breasts line from the Princess Bride," John muttered.

"I would have if we had even encountered any of the Charmed ones." Charles grinned.

"Who wants to bet that having house elf magic is going to be better than having Harry Potter wizard magic?" John asked.

"I'm betting that having both is even better," Tim replied.

Charles just chuckled darkly. "Okay, my stab happy friends… let us go to Harry Potter land."

"To hell and back, otherwise known as number 12 Grimmauld Place," Tim said.

"So what do you say we kidnap Harry from this world and deliver him to one of the worlds where Harry has a huge harem and not enough time for them?" John asked.

"Ask him to leave behind Ron and Hermione, not to mention Sirius?" Charles asked.

"We could take Sirius and Remus," Xander said, having heard the folks speaking of those two favorably this whole time and read about the Marauders in several very good fics.

"Hell; grab Neville, Hermione, Sirius and Tonks. Everyone else is fairly useless," Tim snorted.

"Depends on the fic," Xander chimed in, happily looking up from the tablet full of fanfiction Charles had provided him with.

"I'll agree on Remus if the fic explains why he never fucking visited Harry," Tim growled.

"Probably because he's been brainwashed into thinking he's a danger to Harry. For Harry's sake the old wolf would probably slit his own fucking throat," John said.

Charles shrugged. "Hey, I know where some good stuff is… There's a family in a fic who makes the equivalent of the lycanthropy suppressing items from D&D, they just fell out of use because so few animaguses exist. They stop all shapeshifting."

"So we give Remus a present?" Xander asked cheerfully.

"Right," John agreed.

"What are our goals folks? We need a set of goals before we go rushing off willy nilly," Charles said, stopping himself from dialing into a fic prematurely.

"The goal is to get some magic, then get to a D&D world with some age reduction stuff, then we get some training, then we go after the painter from Dorian Grey." Tim whistled innocently.

"Like that isn't suspicious," Xander said flatly. "I've been around this guy for less than a day and after all the arguments over what he can and can't stab in Harry Potter land... I dunno that he should be functionally immortal."

"I'm not the one that was perfectly willing to cut off Amy's head with an axe," Tim pointed out.

Xander snorted. "With Buffy affected by some curse that would have killed her by boiling her blood? Kill the witch is the best way to be sure. We didn't know at that point that it was Amy's mom."

"I agree. Still, I'm not going to go off the deep end killing innocent people. Evil warlocks, demons if I can ever figure out a way to clean up the power, but no one other than that."

"What about the innocent animals with sentience?" John asked pointedly.

"I'd probably wait until one of them was sick and dying, mercy killing and all that… still, I happen to like animals," Tim said.

"Then why did you bring so many of them up when we were discussing where to get powers?" Xander asked curiously.

"Because most of them aren't really intelligent and they have magic that could help us in our quest besides we know that post owls get old to the point where eventually it's going to be a mercy kill. If we get something out of it, is that really so horrible?" Tim asked.

"There you go being all reasonably sociopathic again," John said.

"I'm not a damn vegan; we raise chickens, we raise cows… We slaughter and eat them." Tim shrugged.

Charles nodded. "Magical animals are something more than just food and this would be like killing someone's house pets really for the most part."

"We'll consider it when and if it comes up," John replied.

Charles looked over at John and raised an eyebrow curiously. "Want to hit one of Nonjon's fics? Namely 'A Black Comedy?"

"I'm fairly sure that I've read it but I don't remember off hand. Does it have a sane Hermione or Ginny?" Tim asked.

"It's an alternate universe, and Harry and Sirius mostly try to fuck anything attractive with a heartbeat and avoid Voldemort before it becomes absolutely necessary to deal with him," John replied.

"That sounds useful," Tim admitted.

"They're fairly powerful and sane in that one; Ginny is more of a punk rock girl and Hermione never met Harry, so she's pretty much the typical Ravenclaw more or less," John said.

"Speaking of which… I know where we could go… I even wrote it," Charles grinned wickedly.

"Spliced?" Tim sighed, "that's horrible and yet still probably better than most of the fics I've written as far as places to visit goes."

"I helped write it," John spoke up.

"Yes you did; do you have a preference for which fic we head to in order to acquire neat stuff?" Charles asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Let's not get bogged down in details right now… just pick a fic where we can get what we need and not feel bad about it afterward," John said "We're overthinking it. Just use a fic where Harry is stuck at the Dursley's while his spoiled twin is hailed as The Boy Who Lived. Those are pretty open with the suckage that needs to be fixed. But first I believe we were heading for canon worlds."

"Okay, canon Harry Potter where we will stab three Death Eaters… Stab Kreacher, kill a couple of horcruxes where we know where they are and we can put Voldemonkey out of business," Charles said.

"Is anyone's birthday July 31st?" John asked looking around.

"July 19th?" Charles shrugged. "Think that qualifies? I don't mind offing Voldemort so Harry doesn't need to."

John nodded. "It's after the middle of the month, so the month qualifies as dying in any case."

"The prophecy is bullshit anyway," Xander called from his position in an easy chair in the corner, "there are HOW many calendars in use or which were used by people that could open it up to interpretations?"

"Hey, I'd be doing it as a favor to Harry anyway; it could be stretched to being at the hand of the other." Charles shrugged. "Besides I can ask for a couple of knuts or a pound coin or something."

"Oh, and we can have Harry stab his own scar so we can make sure we're not neutering him and it'll probably make him a lot more powerful," John mused.

"A little makeup and he can cover his scar."

"What would that matter if he's gonna steal the magic from Voldemonkey's soul fragment with one of the athame anyway?" Xander asked curiously.

"It shouldn't but the damned scar didn't fade completely which means that he'd still get idiots whining about him saving them."

"Give him one of the rings of regeneration and cut the skin off his forehead." Xander shrugged. "It's a relatively small section of skin and it'll grow back without the scar."

Tim laughed. "That's a good idea, the wizarding world is so screwed up it doesn't deserve someone to save it."

"But that's what we'll be doing anyway," Charles said. "We're doing it for the small percentage who does deserve it and to make a profit ourselves."

"Yep, exactly," John agreed.

"When do you want to go in folks?" Charles asked. "We're as kitted out as we need to be, I have ten pounds of gold and silver, several thousand in US cash we could exchange if necessary and all the weapons are tucked away in belts of many pouches."

"I believe we're going to start off in book One canon," John said.

"When he gets his letter?" Tim asked. "That would give us unparalleled access for fixing problems."

"Anyone have a problem with me kicking Dumbledore in his balls and stealing his wand? And if so, which part would you object to?" John asked. "I mean the old bastard is senile and I want the Elder Wand."

Charles shrugged. "If we're going to that extent we might as well take all the Hallows… and Harry's cloak is a family heirloom and one of the few things in canon he has left from his dad. Plus, I doubt the walking Deus Ex Machina even work the way they're reputed to in the first place." Charles figured they'd talked the subject to death already and punched in the coordinates for Harry's backyard at the Dursley's in canon. "Okay everyone…" He waved toward the portal.

John, Tim, and Xander all stepped through and Charles followed, closing the portal behind them.

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0**

Charles looked around and walked over to the back wall, cutting the phone line where it ran into the house before walking to the front door where he calmly knocked repeatedly with a silenced pistol in the hand that wasn't doing the knocking, keeping the pistol concealed by his body and the large trenchcoat he was wearing.

Vernon snarled. "What do you want?!" as he yanked the door open only to stare down the barrel of a very large, and very illegal, silenced handgun.

"We'd like to come inside," Charles said reasonably, waving the other three to the door and when Vernon stepped back totally whitefaced, they entered with the gun firmly covering the whale of a man.

"I believe we're in," Xander said thoughtfully to break the tension in the room.

John nodded and pulled a can of soda out of a pocket much too small to hold it. "Mind if I smoke?"

Vernon glared but didn't dare to object. "Go right ahead," he said through clenched teeth.

"So folks, how about you find the rest of the family while I keep Vernon here company?" Charles asked reasonably. "I believe the mail is due soon and Harry is most likely in the kitchen."

"We might as well see if there is something to eat in here, it's not like the Dursleys need it, I mean Vernon is a whale and his son is an overgrown blob." Tim headed toward the kitchen to have a look around.

Charles chuckled darkly through his nose. "I hear Harry is an excellent cook."

Dudley bounded down the stairs making as much noise as a herd of elephants, getting the gun turned to cover him for his troubles, as Charles drew another from his belt to cover Vernon. "Okay lardass, go sit on the couch. Quietly or comes it a loud noise."

Dudley pissed himself in fear before sliding to the floor with a thud that shook the house as he fainted. "So much for the stiff upper lip, huh?" Xander asked curiously.

Tim walked into the kitchen and frowned slightly as he saw the underweight kid cooking at the stove. "Fun."

Harry turned and looked at the unfamiliar man with a beard that looked just a bit too unkempt to be in his Aunt's house. "Who are you?"

"We're with the school; you'll get your letter in a-" He smiled as the post was slipped through the slot in the door. "Actually just about now. You'll want to pay particular attention to the Hogwarts letter addressed to you."

Charles knelt and gathered the mail as it was fed through the slot in the door, tossing the Dursley's junk onto the table by the door and calling into the kitchen. "Harry, your letter is here."

Harry cautiously left the stove and went into the livingroom where his eyes shot open in shock at seeing Vernon being held at gunpoint. "W-what's going on?"

"Just a little judicial rebalancing of the scales kid," Charles said fondly as he handed over the important piece of parchment.

John was watching Xander closely, as his hands were clenching and unclenching rapidly as he thought about what Harry had went through in this place. "I'm glad you and I have the weapons," he said looking over at Charles.

Charles shrugged. "I didn't want him killing the fat bastard, it might traumatize the kid."

Harry blinked owlishly, quite unused to any adult showing him much of any consideration.

"Go ahead and open it," Xander gestured to the letter hanging almost unnoticed in his hand. "It's your Hogwarts letter."

Vernon couldn't resist snarling at this point, "I'm not paying for him to go have some duffer teach him magic tricks."

Without missing a beat Charles slammed the barrel of the pistol into his temple, sending the fat man crashing to the floor with a rapidly purpling knot on the side of his head. "That's entirely enough out of you."

Petunia meanwhile was white as a sheet and staring at the tableau in shock.

"What kind of a name is Hogwarts?" Harry asked as he cracked the seal on the letter and slowly unrolled it.

"A school for magic where with a little luck and a bit of effort you'll make tons of new friends and learn to do some amazing things." Charles replied, making the guns vanish into his belt.

"Was that magic?" Harry asked timidly and blinked as the weapons disappeared.

"Yup, that was magic." Charles grinned at him; pulling out a cigarette of his own and taking a deep drag off the nicotine filled stick to calm down, before he shot Vernon and Petunia out of hand.

"Where can I get all this stuff anyway?" Harry asked, with more confidence as no one had even raised their voice to him and Vernon was lying unconscious on the floor.

"Diagon Alley in London," Xander replied helpfully.

"You can really find all this stuff in London?" Harry chirped.

"Yep, Diagon Alley is the magical shopping center there," Charles replied.

Tim said, "That reminds me, we're going to need some funds, pony up," he ordered the unconscious man.

Charles shrugged and knelt down, removing the solid gold money clip packed with notes from Vernon's pocket. "He just did."

"That makes things a lot easier, consider this one tiny almost insignificant drop in the ocean of things you owe Harry," Tim said firmly more concerned that Harry and Petunia heard the words than that Vernon did.

Charles shrugged. "Shall we go Harry?"

Harry eagerly nodded and the quartet, now numbering five, headed out of the staid little house in the suburbs and towards the train station.

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0**

"So, how much was Vernon's contribution to Harry's further education?" Xander asked curiously.

"I dunno, the whole money clip was packed with 50 pound notes," Charles replied nonchalantly. "More than enough to pay for Harry's school things when converted into galleons as well as a new wardrobe and pair of glasses or contacts for the boy."

Harry blinked owlishly, "Thanks…" He was obviously having problems understanding why a quartet of large men appeared just to help him get his school things. Much less men with guns who enforced their will on Vernon with carefully applied violence. He was drinking a soda one of them had handed him and staring at the corndog in his hand with mild confusion, not having had one before.

Charles headed over into the deserted and very dirty alleyway beside the Leaky Cauldron, which all of them could surprisingly see. "Okay guys, get in here." He waved Harry toward him.

Harry cautiously walked into the alleyway with the strange man, none of them had yet introduced themselves after all, on the other hand, none of them had hurt him and they obviously could have. The other three men followed him, all of them warily looking around as they did so.

"Harry, my name is Charles; these fine people with me are John, Tim, and Xander. It's our pleasure to meet you and like we said in front of the giraffe and the varying tubs of lard, we're here to help you," Charles said as he pointed to each of them in turn as he told Harry their names.

"Why are we in the alleyway?" Harry asked curiously.

"Good question," John said blowing a cloud of smoke in the air.

"We're in this alleyway because it's enchanted so mundanes can't see it and because we need some privacy," Charles replied and pulled off one of the rings on his finger before offering it to Harry. "This is a ring of regeneration, and you'll heal quite rapidly with it on. John demonstrate."

"What? How do I do that?" John demanded.

"Cut yourself, he needs to see it work," Charles said irritably.

"Fine," John said opening up a pocket knife and turning to Harry. "Watch this, cause I'm only doing it once." He stabbed himself in the palm and held his hand out for Harry to examine as the blood welled up around the blade. "Look quickly this heals in seconds."

"Why do I need that?" Harry asked, looking kind of queasy as John pulled the blade out from between the bones of his hand and the flesh healed behind it.

"Because the man that killed your parents left you a very foul present in that scar on your forehead that makes you so recognizable. There's a chunk of the idiot's soul in your forehead and we're trying to avoid some problems down the line," Charles replied, probably explaining too much, but not wanting to treat the kid like a mushroom, as he had been treated his entire life at Dumbledore's behest.

"What do I need to do to get it out?" Harry asked, looking disgusted as he remembered all the stuff that they'd told him about Voldemort and his parents' world on the long train ride to London from Surrey.

"Just stick this knife into your scar. It's enchanted to deal with problems like that," Charles replied offering a sheathed ornate looking dagger to Harry as well. "Just whatever you do don't take the ring off."

Harry shuddered. "I have to stab myself in the head?"

"More like a poke, shouldn't be much more than it takes to draw blood," Tim assured him.

Charles pulled out a steel mirror and held it so Harry could see his own face and the scar that somehow seemed far more malevolent than any scar had a right to.

Harry trembled and put the ring on, then unsheathed the extremely sharp looking blade and looked from it to the Americans standing around him. "I'm following a bunch of men I don't know into a dark alley and I'm about to stab myself in the head at their request… and yet it's still better than breakfast at the Dursley's."

"Hopefully, you never have to go back," Tim replied.

"But if you do, I'm fairly certain Vernon and Petunia learned a harsh life lesson that was long overdue," Charles assured him and chuckled darkly.

"But then again there are many places you'd be welcome," John pointed out. "This world kinda blows goats thanks to Dumbledore, and not the younger one ironically enough."

Harry resolutely pressed the blade to his forehead and after taking a deep breath shoved it into his scar with a pained wince. A burst of oily black smoke exploded from the scar with an unearthly shriek and Harry fell to the ground unconscious a moment later.

Charles looked around at the group. "Okay, do we get rid of the scar while he's out?"

"Oh hell yes." Tim stated.

"I think the more important question is; is he still breathing?" John snapped.

Charles knelt and sheathed the dagger, tucking it away along with the mirror in a pouch before pulling out a small wickedly sharp pocket knife and carefully cut the scar off his forehead, cursing as he had to cut away a bit more than he felt comfortable with, which healed cleanly with not a mark a few seconds later.

Harry came to with a hand in front of his face and was quickly pulled to his feet. "Did it work?!" he asked excitedly.

Charles held out the mirror. "See for yourself."

Harry bounced excitedly, feeling a hundred times better than he did before he stabbed himself in the forehead oddly enough as he saw only unblemished skin under a thin patina of blood.

John offered him a wet wipe. "Wet wipe?"

Harry grabbed it without a second thought and cleaned up. "Thanks."

"We should probably head to the store and pick Harry up some normal clothes that actually fit," Xander spoke up.

"That's no problem, let's go kid…" Charles said, gently but firmly guiding Harry out of the alley and expecting the others to follow.

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0**

Harry grinned happily, dressed for the first time ever in his memory in clothes that actually fit with a whole wardrobe of other clothes stuffed in a bag Charles had stuffed in a pocket. He especially liked his black Harley Davidson boots and black leather jacket. He felt like he fit right in with the rest of them. "So, Diagon Alley?" he asked, looking up at the adults he had spent the better part of the day wandering around England with.

Xander nodded. "The ancient Chinese art of shop'ping awaits. For something more fun than clothes and new glasses anyway. We've already done more than enough of the boring kind."

The group headed in to the Leaky Cauldron and Charles walked up to Tom the bartender at the counter; "Hello, could I trouble you to open the gate into the alley? I'm afraid our wands and most of our luggage were destroyed by the muggle's excuse for transportation. The worst part is I'm going to have to listen to the old lady telling me she was right. Should have just taken a bloody portkey."

Tom nodded, this wasn't the first time he'd had to help stranded travellers from overseas and

lead them out to the back wall where he opened the alley for them. "Be seeing you later then, sorry to hear about your wands."

"We can arrange for new ones in the alley correct?" Charles asked.

"Of course; Ollivanders is just there," Tom pointed to the shop, "best wands in all of Britain."

"My thanks." Charles nodded and headed toward the bank.

Tim tried not to scowl as they walked into the bank and passed several goblins on their way toward a teller that could exchange the money they'd appropriated from Vernon.

Charles walked up to the teller. "I'd like to exchange some muggle pounds for galleons please?"

The goblin looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "How much would you like to exchange?"

He pulled out Vernon's somewhat diminished money clip and counted out a large stack. "2,500 pounds."

The goblin checked his book for the exchange rate. "At the going rate that's 500 galleons, would you like a money bag with an extension charm?"

Tim asked, "How much?"

The goblin turned to Tim with a raised eyebrow. "The standard fee is 10 galleons."

Charles shrugged. "Then we'd like one… Actually with such a bag I believe I'd like to exchange

3000 pounds."

The goblin nodded and quickly counted out six small bags, each marked as containing 100 galleons. From the last bag he removed 10 galleons and then he offered a small canvas drawstring purse from underneath his countertop.

"My thanks, master goblin," Charles said, transferring the contents of each of the bags into the purse and with a polite nod headed to rejoin Harry, John, and Xander in the waiting area.

After assuring there was no one around in eavesdropping range Charles spoke up, "Alright, we have 590 galleons to spend of Vernon's money. Harry, we'll have to visit your vault later as none of us has the key. But we easily have enough money for everything on your list and upgraded versions besides, along with what we need to pick up."

Harry nodded eagerly, staring out into the alley with wide eyes as the group began moving around and purchasing various things.

By the end of their whirlwind tour of the alley they had purchased everything Harry needed, and some he wasn't sure why they purchased, including a multi-compartment trunk and several wizarding tents and lots of books, far more than had been on the list from which they had oddly bought several copies of the various books.

They had also purchased him a mokeskin bag which was expanded to hold everything, which he found rather nice though the price had been rather steep compared to the other things they'd bought for him, almost equalling the price of the trunk or the wizarding tent.

They had each purchased one also and sent his new familiar, Hedwig to wait for him at The Leaky Cauldron. All in all they had spent a bewildering amount of money, nearly everything they had exchanged at the counter.

Charles grinned at Harry who was looking very overwhelmed as they ate a quiet lunch of sandwiches at the ice cream stand. "A tad disconcerting how fast money can go, isn't it?"

Harry nodded. "That guy Ollivander was pretty creepy too."

"I wonder if he pulls a disappearing or appearing act on everyone who comes in?" Xander mused thoughtfully.

Charles shrugged. "It's immaterial really; Harry has his wand, a wand holster and a care kit so he doesn't need to interact with the man again. What do you want to do next, Harry? I don't think the Dursley's would be very appreciative of your company at the moment."

Harry froze as he tried to come up with something, he wasn't used to people asking him what he wanted to do. He gave himself a mental shake then pushed on. "Can I stay with you guys until it's time to leave for school?"

Charles blinked, obviously not expecting the question then shrugged. "I don't really see why not. We may have to leave every so often, but we'll make sure you're not alone."

"Yay!" Harry cheered.

Charles looked around the group, obviously wondering what they were going to do with a kid for the month of August and how it would affect their plans.

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0**

The month of August had passed quickly and pleasantly for the group in a large wizarding tent with unplottable and notice me not enchantments in the middle of a park in London. Harry had great fun playing with other children in the park and even with learning magic along with his new friends.

They had all joined in working with him and teaching him the stuff in his first year books, from potions to the various wanded subjects. They had made so many potions he knew the book backwards and forwards and could make the potions from memory! He'd had to refill his deluxe potions kit three times.

Unbeknownst to Harry there were now several Death Eaters who had lost their magic and been deposited to survive or not on the Isle of Dread. Voldemort would have nearly a dozen fewer followers when he attempted to return to power. Several of whom had been in the Ministry.

Harry looked over the table with the five golden vials on it at the four adults who were relaxing and watching him. "So, if I drink this I become super strong and tough?"

"That's the idea," Xander replied.

"What is it?" Harry looked at it dubiously.

"Re'em blood; bloody expensive and imported from the Navajo reservation. They occasionally sell off some to bring in money. They keep watch on one of the few remaining herds of the golden aurochs that still exist," Charles replied.

"Let me guess, they were hunted down for their blood?" Harry mused.

"Well, their blood and hides," Tim replied.

"And the stuff you have here?" Harry asked.

"Completely legally harvested on the reservation from a specimen that's still roaming around alive and well," Charles replied. It had been a stroke of luck, running into the amerind shaman who had been here to sell off some of the excess before he'd been able to sell it to the potions shop.

Still the man had been quite willing to trade a vial for each of the ten silver bars he'd offered.

"Bottoms up?" Harry said warily and picked up one of the vials.

"Bottoms up," John agreed and they all downed a vial of the salty elixir.

Harry shivered and then they all went to acclimate to their new strength and resilience.

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0**

Tim looked around the shop with some amusement. 'You have some very interesting artifacts here, it must have taken you a lifetime to collect most of these."

Borgin smirked. "My collection is unrivaled."

"Excellent then I can assume that you've seen all manner of magical items correct?"

"Of course."

"Excellent." Tim pulled out one the switch blade and held it up for Borkin to look at. "I don't suppose you can tell me about the charms on this?"

Borgin replied. "Pass it over and I'll have a look."

Tim shot the man with his concealed pistol without ever taking it out of his pocket. The bullet impacting the Death Eater sympathizer in the shoulder, "Fucking purebloods." He then stepped forward and stabbed him with his power stealing switchblade.

Charles grinned. "Well handled, aren't you glad I insisted we learn how to inscribe silencing runes now? No muss, no fuss… just a bit of a mess we can evanesco away."

John dropped the limp corpse of 'Lucy' Malfoy in the corner and wiped off his switchblade while guarding the door.

"Huh, when did he show up?" Xander asked with a raised eyebrow.

"It's like a damned supermarket in here, we should come down here twice a week and clean house." Charles grinned.

"Wonder how many Death Eaters we can get if we just stand around in here and wait?" Tim mused.

"Works for me," Charles shrugged, opening a portal and tossing both Borgin and Malfoy through it after looting them.

"You know, he's a shopkeeper right? He probably does orders and has a list of customers waiting for items, right?" John said. "We can send them messages saying their orders have come in, it'll be like ordering take out. They come in and we take them out."

Tim blinked as he looked at John. "That's a surprisingly good idea… well excellent idea, I'm not sure…" he trailed off, as pointing out that it wasn't a good thing probably wasn't a good idea.

"Makes sense, we turn this place into a roach motel for today," Xander agreed with their plan happily.


	4. Chapter 4 - What's Up Doc?

September 1st had come and gone; Harry was off to Hogwarts, Pettigrew had been delivered in a hamster ball which had been charmed unbreakable, along with a vial of veritaserum to Madam Bones with the strong suggestion she use it on the animagus after being purchased from Ron Weasley for the princely sum of 10 gold pieces in Diagon Alley.

Rita Skeeter had found herself on the Isle of Dread sans magic, after she had been caught snooping around Harry one too many times while they were in the Alley and general environs.

She joined Lucius Malfoy, Walden MacNair, Dolores Umbridge, Amycus and Alecto Carrow, Barty Crouch Junior and Senior, Yaxley, Crabbe Senior and Goyle Senior, along with Avery Junior and Senior, along with Winky who attacked rather viciously to protect the unrepentant Death Eater.

"And what are we going to do tomorrow night, Brain?" John asked with a grin.

"We're planning on hitting 40k and Fallout next," Charles replied.

"No, no and fuck no! Look over there, it's my the chance I'm fucking going and it's flying off! I wouldn't bet a rat's ass on your chances of getting my to go to either one of those hell holes. Everyone crazy enough to go raise your hand!" John spouted.

Tim raised his hand with a smirk, as did Charles while rolling his eyes.

Xander chuckled, "I'll just hang out with John."

John grinned. "Actually, drop us off in L.A. in the Night of the Comet world."

Xander said, "After the zombies are dead please."

"You guys each have your wizarding tents and other equipment right? I'll leave you the flask of infinite water and my pouch of endless rations." Charles asked, looking between John and Xander.

Xander patted his chest where his mokeskin pouch with undetectable expansion charms rested. "I've got my stuff…"

John nodded. "The place is more like a movie stage where everyone just walked off, leaving all their valuables unattended…."

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0**

Tim and Charles were headed for a series of portal jumps the other two wanted no part of, so they left them where they could cheerfully loot LA while camping on an empty previously zombie infested world.

"So, back to D&D first?" Charles asked Tim curiously.

"Why?" Tim asked.

"One, we need to kit you out in some items and I've thought of a few new ones we could use before we head to Fallout or Warhammer 40k," Charles replied.

"Yes…" Tim shrugged.

"Waterdeep okay with you?" Charles asked, thumbing through his bookshelf curiously.

"Sure is," Tim replied. "What is it you have in mind for us to do there?"

"For one thing I've gathered up 640 pounds of pepper, nutmeg and cloves to sell along with 10 pounds of saffron which was all they had in the stores I went to. I've got a big order of saffron that I'm waiting on from Amazon, but that'll take a bit," Charles replied.

"So, you want to continue playing spice trader then?" Tim asked.

"Sure do, it's basically following the rules of supply and demand… Just in a hacked version where we turn a few hundred bucks into a few hundred pounds of gold." Charles grinned. "Though I am VERY glad for this teleportation ability so we don't destabilize the global gold market."

"We should look at some of the Final Fantasy worlds after this, I seem to recall them having some really broken ass magical items that D&D just doesn't have."

"Sounds good, but I'd rather have some better equipment before facing off against Final Fantasy mobs."

"That's why I said after."

Charles nodded and checked his shopping list. "Okay; we need three belts of many pouches, one for you, one for Xander and one for Harry… three rings of rapid regeneration… Also five rings of sustenance. Unless you'd rather have a ring of coolness to keep from getting overheated?"

"Nope, I'd have to be someplace pretty screwed up before I worried about overheating," Tim replied.

"For a total of 195,500 gold pieces. Out of an expected 375,200 gold pieces from my spice importing," Charles continued. "Not a bad profit, that leaves money for a Daern's Instant Fortress if we can find one. Plus whatever other essentials we come across."

Charles punched in the code for Waterdeep and guided the portal to open on the outskirts of the city.

Tim grabbed his arm. "Hey wait a minute. We need to be equipped before we head out."

Charles slapped his forehead. "Okay, what do you want?" he asked as he pulled his guns out of his mokeskin bag and armed himself and threw his trenchcoat on over it. He tapped his shins and made sure he was wearing his bracers of armor +4.

"Something I can point at the monsters and shoot, I'm not picky," Tim replied.

"Long gun or short then?" Charles asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Short, makes it easier."

"Do you want more ammo or more thump power?" Charles continued.

"I'm a decent shot, I'd like what I hit to fall down."

Charles nodded and handed over the .45 acp he'd loaned Xander before. "Okay, there are 14 in the mag, and 1 up the pipe. Safety is here on this model and there are five spare magazines in pouches," he explained as he showed Tim the gun and passed over the gunbelt.

Tim checked the safety. "Okay, got it."

"You have shot one of those before right?" Charles asked curiously just to make sure.

"I'll be handing you the damn gun back to clean, but I'm a decent shot and I've shot a similar model before," Tim replied.

Charles snorted and nodded. "No problem, I have a cleaning kit and it's not too complicated to take apart clean and put back together. We ready now?"

"Yep. Let's go sell overly inflated spices to people with more money than brains."

Charles chortled. "It's all a matter of supply and demand. Spices are expensive because they're hard to get from one place to another in D&Dland."

"Doesn't mean they're worth it," Tim replied flatly.

Charles shrugged nonchalantly. "Nobles with deep pockets man, nobles with deep pockets."

"Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they're that stupid, but at the prices of food and the quality, if I was a noble there, I'd get a ring of sustenance."

"No chance of being poisoned that way either," Charles acknowledged.

"Exactly."

Charles opened the portal and they quickly stepped through, the portal winking shut behind them.

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0**

The two of them were greeted by the sounds of many nearby howls when they stepped through the portal.

Tim groaned, "Crap!" as he clicked the safety off and raised his pistol, being careful not to point it at Charles.

"I like wolves dammit…" Charles muttered as he clicked the safety off and raised his carbine warily. Darting behind a nearby boulder and flipped cinched his headlamp on his forehead and turned it on. "Get back here behind cover."

Tim ran for cover.

Soon a group of six nasty looking large wolves with goblins astride their backs appeared running through the forest at them. Charles took careful aim and fired at the first; the only indication he had fired was his shoulder recoiling and the muzzle blast and the immense hole that opened in the warg's chest, sending it tumbling and rolling across the goblin riding it. "Gotta love HP enchanting, a few small runes and no loud noise."

Tim aimed and started shooting at the worgs as fast as he could, the heavy pistol bucking in his hand. "Yeah, hooray for the sounds of fucking silence," he replied conversationally as goblin spears rained down toward their position, mostly bouncing and shattering off the boulders.

The two continued firing; taking out the opposition. After a few moments the only sounds were the whimpers of the dying wolves and the whining and yelling of pinned goblins. Along with Charles' cursing as he realized that one of the goblin spears had torn a gash in his trenchcoat, revealing one of the sewn in lexan plates.

Tim carefully walked over and picked up a goblin spear in his free hand that he used to pin the dying worgs in place so that he could stab them for any magic they had.

"One of those fucking goblins actually managed to loft a spear in over the rocks and mess up my trenchcoat," Charles grumbled as he pulled out his wand and used reparo.

"It's called a natural twenty." Tim sighed. "Either that or random chance."

"Reparo is the singular most broken spell I can think of," Charles replied as he wandered over to loot the goblins. "Not much use in skinning the worgs, I don't recall a bounty on their hides and we pretty much ruined them anyway."

"Reparo on the hides?"

Charles shrugged. "Do you know how to skin?"

"You're the one that scored a stupid high level on the dungeon preparedness test."

Charles chuckled and pulled out a knife. "I do know how to skin, but I'd hoped you did also. No time like the present for you to learn. I've never skinned a wolf before, but it can't be too different to skinning a deer."

"Fuck that, we've got plenty of money and that's messy as hell."

Charles shrugged. "Hey! There's a skinning spell and a tanning spell in the wizard outdoorsmen guide book we bought. I just remembered." Charles dug the book in question out of his mokeskin pouch.

"Ah well, hell if it's that easy we might as well."

"I knew I bought that book for something!" Charles declared enthusiastically and worked at casting the appropriate spells, it took some 20 minutes or so for the two of them to perfect but in the end they were left with 6 pristinely tanned worg hides and 6 mangled goblin hides they'd tested the spell on until they got it right.

"I've got no interest in goblin hides. I vote we vanish them along with the carcasses." Charles motioned to the mess.

"Yeah, because that's just damned creepy, truth be told." Tim asked, "Did we get any loot?"

"A small pouch of gemstones and a few hundred coins in a mix of gold, silver and copper. Most of the coins were copper."

"Apparently their raiding gig paid more than I would have expected. Being an adventurer is rather awesome."

"That's not counting all the random trash the little idiots had and the crappy goblin equipment," Charles continued, "what fucking use could they have had for childrens booties or 2 dozen bags of marbles?"

"The marbles can be used to bet or to screw with people running in a hallway."

"Want some of them then?" Charles waved at the pouches he had set aside full of marbles. "There are half a dozen sets of jacks in there also. They also had a couple of game boards I can't recognize and one had a set of dice with funky goblin symbols on them."

"Sure, they probably make decent sling shot bullets as well. Not that I actually remembered to grab mine."

"If you need a slingshot when you have nearly a hundred rounds of .45 acp then we're in real trouble," Charles replied. "But if you want you can borrow mine; I even have a conversion to fire arrows with it."

"Nah, without getting it enchanted like hell I don't think it would actually be worthwhile in a D&D world."

Charles nodded. "Okay, Waterdeep is this way." Charles turned and headed in the appropriate direction through the forest.

"That should give us enough gold to get to the next destination on our list of places to go."

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0**

The two had spent several days sourcing magical items, not to mention the one completely tedious day they had spent marching around the Trade's Ward selling off a pound or so of spices here and there a bit at the time, as the buyer's gold permitted. They had eventually managed to unload the rest for gemstones by selling them to a dwarven caravan heading home.

Charles and Tim were sitting in an inn sipping a very fine mead in Charles' case and mulled apple cider in Tim's case. "That was more tedious than I thought it would be," Charles mused.

Tim shrugged. "We're probably only going to have to do it a couple of times. Once we get equipped we can go slaughter monsters for coin."

"Yeah, hunting monsters is less tedious than marching all over town to sell stuff here and yonder. Though we did manage to acquire everything we came for; which is a definite plus in my opinion. Even if we did have to spend three days repairing that guy's ship using reparo charms to get him to part with the Instant Fortress for any price," Charles replied.

"Well worth it, even if we did wind up paying roughly 20k more than it's listed for in the books," Tim said.

"Yeah, that thing is gonna make our future expeditions much safer if we have to plant our asses somewhere inhospitable. We'll need to etch HP style runes into it of course to make sure it doesn't get all fucked up and expand the space inside though," Charles said thoughtfully as he drained his mug of mead.

"That should be workable."

"All else fails we'll take it to the bloody adventuring supply store where they sold us the wizarding tents and multicompartment trunks," Charles replied with a grin. "Ready to go?"

Tim whispered, "We've got our magic items, there's really no reason to stick around when we can get some rather broken and amazing items elsewhere a lot easier. Disgaea also has some very nice items and the ability to improve items which could be even more useful with items from other worlds."

"To 40k?" Charles asked a trifle warily as he shrugged on his Displacer Cloak.

"Yep." Tim put his own Displacer cloak on.

A portal opened in the back of the room and both of them stepped out into a blasted battlefield with the sounds of gunfire and artillery loud in the distance.

"I thought you said that this was supposed to be an old battlefield?"

"This is 40k, they're CONSTANTLY at war - the novel this portal connects to has them fighting roughly 30 miles from here. I'm guessing the only reason we can hear it is because that's artillery and missile fire," Charles replied.

"Let's get looting then." Tim looked around with interest trying to figure out what was useable and what wasn't.

Charles walked around the battlefield where assorted Eldar and imperial guard bodies were scattered about along with greenskin corpses. "Orks, Eldar and imperial guard fighting over the same damn mudball. At least we've got a good assortment of gear to pick through."

Tim shrugged. "I'll grab whatever but I'm not all that interested in stabbing things for magic here and most of the really good things require more skills than I have to use properly." He smiled as he saw an interesting pair of swords on the corpse of a dead space elf. "That looks promising."

"An eldar witch blade? Well, it's a very powerful psychic focus which will come in handy if we find anyone willing to do psychic surgery on us later that we can trust," Charles said as he gathered up various models of Imperial Lasguns and bandoleers and such from the guards he was grabbing the gear from.

"We'll go to Athas, everything is for sale."

"But would you trust anyone involved?" Charles asked as he moved on to Eldar weapons; picking up his own set of witch blades and several shuriken catapults and shuriken pistols as well as their ammunition.

"Only if we can get them to sign a magical contract on the deal."

"And where would we get that ability? I'm not sure I want to jump into Scooby Gamers," Charles replied.

"Hell; I would, I mean Dawn and Cordelia… then again Willow might be a little unstable and Shiny scares the hell out of me…" Tim shrugged. "We should get the hell out of here."

The dull crunching sounds of heavy Ork boots and the sound of Orks whining about stoopid 'umies announced they had company and they fell back behind the burning wreckage of an Imperial Guard tank.

"Portal, now… fucking hell!"

Charles opened a portal to what looked like a crashed Federation Shuttle. "Go!"

Tim jumped through the portal, almost any place was better than 40k. Especially with Orks inbound. Charles followed, jumping through and closing the portal behind them.

Charles panted and grinned wickedly at Tim. "That was fun."

"Fucking lunatic... " Tim laughed. "So, where are we?"

"Welcome to Fallout 2; namely a special encounter in Fallout 2 known as the Federation Crash Site. I hope to find a replicator in that downed spacecraft. There also should be a few phazers scattered around here somewhere and some Voyager era medicine," Charles replied, heading over to the shuttle and prying the door open with a pry bar from his mokeskin pouch.

"If we're in the Fallout world, that means that there will be a cyberdoc somewhere right? There was a quest or something for combat implants wasn't there?" Tim asked as he leaned against the shuttle.

"Not if you want to get augmented with good cybernetics from Shadowrun; I wouldn't want to try and mix cybernetics from two different universes," Charles replied from inside the shuttle. "Fuck yes! The replicator is undamaged!"

Tim could hear Charles dancing a jig inside the hull of the downed shuttle. "I wasn't really concerned either way, considering I'm looking at reincarnation via Disgaea hacks or magical abilities collected from monsters."

"And John would never forgive us if we went to Disgaea without him." Charles chortled and Tim could hear him working on removing the replicator from inside the crashed Torres shuttle.

"We can always go two or three times, I want the ability to open item worlds."

"Doesn't everyone?" Charles asked rhetorically as he came out of the ship with his headlamp turned on and brandished the metal case of the replicator happily. "Lookie what I found."

"Dead aliens?" Tim deadpanned with a grin.

"No… a replicator," Charles replied as he stuffed it into his mokeskin bag and headed around to search the three dead people in redshirts on the ground. "They look like they died of dehydration, so I'm guessing the replicator ceased to function when the engines did."

"You might want to hit it with a couple of repair charms before we hook it up to a power supply."

"Oh, I intend to," Charles replied confidently. "I'm just happy the damn thing wasn't shattered beyond all repair by the crash." Charles handed Tim one of the three hand phasers recovered from the dead bodies of the three crew members.

Tim took the phaser to look it over. "Okay, now I just need a lightsaber and my geek collection of idiot weapons will be complete. There were a couple of good lightsaber crystals in the Old Republic that would be interesting. I mean there has to be one where the damned hero got a game over message."

"Geek collection of idiot weapons?" Charles asked curiously as he pulled out a full sized shovel and began digging great swathes of sandy soil up from the ground.  
>"Yep, phasers and lightsabers, I just started it today." He smiled.<p>

"Well, I grabbed lots of shuriken catapults and pistols as well as lots of lasguns and laspistols from the Imperial Guard so you can have one of those too," Charles replied as his enhanced strength made short work of digging three graves for the poor dead bastards wearing the red shirts.

"Thanks, normally I wouldn't bother but hey, why not? I mean, everyone needs a hobby."

"Plus infinite ammo doesn't suck. The hand phasers I grabbed because they're here, but we couldn't recharge them and have to hope additional batteries are in the replicator program. I also hope the damn replicator can scan stuff and add it to the databanks," Charles continued as he tossed dirt back onto the graves.

"Why didn't you just use your wand or one of the phasers?" Tim asked with a raised eyebrow.

Charles facepalmed. "Because I haven't had access to magic my whole damn life; it'll take more than a few days of having access to HP magic for me to start using it to the fullest extent."

"Okay, I can understand that. Let's hit some of the final fantasy worlds. I've got some ideas." Tim smiled mischievously.

"In a bit; first I want to stock my new Instant Fortress… and offload a whole bunch of guns from 40k," Charles replied as he tossed the cube off to one side away from anything and activated it causing the tower to shoot upward.

"That sounds like a plan, I'd rather not wander around with my witch blades right now."

Charles nodded. "I figure we'll put all that stuff on the weapon racks the guy was nice enough to leave behind. Along with the slugthrower weapons we brought from our Earth and swap to lasguns I looted from the Imperials. They're lighter and we won't have to worry about ammunition other than the power packs; which recharge in sunlight or if you toss them in a fire."

"That should help."

"Plus, no recoil or sound from the damn things." Charles grinned wickedly as he wandered inside and toward the armory where he proceeded to unload dozens of weapons. "Oh, and we got a few frag grenades and a couple of krak grenades out of that trip to boot."

Tim followed him in and did much the same. "That should be useful."

"Since we're in Fallout we should grab some practice shooting at random crap until we're used to firing lasers instead of bullets." Charles finished, checking out the many different patterns of laser weapons available before making his selections and taking several power packs to go with them. "I'm taking a bullpup Accatran Pattern Mark IV lasgun and an Accatran Pattern Mark III Laspistol."

"I'll take one of the pistol looking things…" Tim shrugged. "Slavers or scorpions?"

"Whichever we run into first?" Charles replied as he passed Tim a standard Imperial Guard issue laspistol and four spare power packs on a belt.

"That works for me." He put the power packs away and clipped the pistol on where he wouldn't be shooting himself in the foot with it.

They'd actually wound up spending a few hours shooting at a whole lot of nothing; mainly cactus and rocks before returning to where they'd left John and Xander.

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0**

Charles looked around the area, Xander's tent was set up but he didn't see John or Xander anywhere around "Hellooo the tent!"

"There's a note attached to the frame," Tim pointed at the tent's doorway.

Charles wandered over and yanked it off the duct tape which was securing it there. "Gone looting; be back when we are out of carrying capacity, John and Xander."

"Okay, the two of them are obviously occupied. I hope Xander keeps etch a sketch for brains out of trouble and remembers where they left their tent." Charles muttered.

Tim shrugged. "Either way, I'm fairly sure that we could find them by using an air horn or something of that nature."

"Or the point me spell," Charles said with a grin.

"What the hell type of cheating is that?" Tim said with a smirk as he had used the same spell in a number of fics.

"The kind that saves lots of time and effort."

"Okay, I guess we can try that or we could just go toward the explosions."

*Boom!*Boom!*Boom!*

Tim muttered, "Fucking children and high explosion devices." as they headed toward their compatriots.

Tim laughed as they got to the bank where the almost continuous shouting of 'reducto' could be heard. "Yeah, okay we're going to have practice that spell until we can do it silently and without a damned wand."

Charles nodded. "Sounds like a plan to me."

Tim used sonorous and called at the bank, "Come out with your hands up."

"You'll never take us alive coppers!" John shouted back at them.

Charles wandered in and looked the two dust covered figures over and turned to the one who was smoking. "Did you search the manager's office for the combination first at least? It's probably taped to the bottom of his desk or in a drawer."

"Of course not that's not the purpose of this exercise." John said with a grin.

Charles shrugged. "What is the purpose of this exercise? Other than making a lot of racket?"

"Learning big bada boom!" John exclaimed, "Cast it enough and we'll be able to do it wandlessly not to mention with more force."

Charles shrugged. "Tom the toothless bartender at the Leaky Cauldron can use wandless magic all the time in canon, so I see no reason why we can't with the magic of three death eaters each."

Tim shrugged, "So, how much gold did you steal? I mean find."

"All of it!" John replied cheerfully.

Charles raised an eyebrow. "Somehow I doubt that. Anyway, do you two monkeys want to go with us somewhere more amusing?" Charles asked them curiously as he leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette.

Tim gave the cigarette a glance then took a side step before ignoring it. "I suggest Disgaea or perhaps Final Fantasy."

"As soon as we get into this thing because we've been reductoing the fuck out of it for hours," Xander said.

Charles sighed and shrugged, pulling out a krak grenade. "Okay monkeys back up."

"No, you have to use reducto it's an exercise." John said and Charles sighed and put the grenade back in a pouch.

Tim pulled out his wand and started using reducto on the giant hinges which they had obviously ignored for some reason. Charles joined him; not really having any interest in staying there for a week casting the same damn spell at a hardened steel and reinforced concrete bank vault.

Eventually the huge door fell to the floor with a massive clang. "Okay, let's see what there is to see." Charles said when the dust settled.

Inside were massive stacks of 80s era banknotes in racks. "Okay, that should still be useful." Tim noted.

John looked around in dismay, "Where are all the damn boxes?"

"Boxes?" Xander asked curiously.

"Safety deposit boxes!" John exclaimed.

"They don't keep those in the vault," Charles replied dryly while wiping dust off his face.

"Well where the hell should I have checked for them? Should I have checked the damn lady's room first?" John yelled.

Tim sighed. "Nah, that would be where they would stick them in a bad spy movie."

Xander spoke up as he walked off, "I'll be right back."

John called out, "We're not in a bad spy movie!"

"No, we're in a bad zombie movie!" he called back as he headed toward the lady's restroom.

"Touche," John muttered.

Charles just walked into the manager's office and checked the security system before heading to a steel door off to the left hand side of the corridor and used Alohomora on the door before twisting the knob and opening it. "Here are all your damn boxes." He grinned at John wickedly as he waved his hand toward row after row of security deposit boxes.

John blew a raspberry at him and quickly entered the room using his short handled sledge hammer and a chisel to pop open a box that he pulled from its drawer. Opening it up he pulled out an envelope and opened it.

"Dear Janice, if you are reading this I am dead and I just want to say I have never loved you, and your sister was better in bed, Love Craig," John read aloud. "OK, not that one." Pulling another box out he again pried it open only to find a Captain Crunch whistle and a 3.5 inch floppy disk. "What the fuck?"

"Why not just use the unlocking charm?" Charles asked curiously.

"I haven't practiced that spell," John admitted.

Pulling another box out and popping the lock he pulled out a stack of cash and several different IDs with the same picture. "Hah, bad spy movie it is!"

Charles wandered into the vault and joined Xander in packing up the stacks of 80's currency; it would spend perfectly well on whichever world they went to that was a "modern earth"; like Sunnydale for example.

Tim pulled out his wand, wandered over to the safety deposit boxes and started practicing his unlocking spell.

Seeing him working on it, John shrugged and copied him, having little success and eventually resorting to artfully used reductos, barely whispered, to destroy the locks. "And we have… a mint condition Han Solo in a plastic package from 1972! Woot!"

"Huh, to each their own," Tim said.

"I'm pretty sure I can buy Andrew and Jonathan's soul with this," John pointed out, before going back to playing safety deposit box roulette. Five pairs of used panties, three 'I'm dead and never loved you letters', and 2 CIA drop boxes later…. "I expected more," John admitted.

"Who'd want either of their souls?" Xander called from within the vault, but John didn't answer.

Tim pulled out a small bag of gems. "You know, a jewelry store would probably give us things to trade that are far better than looking through this crap."

Charles and Xander were playing poker for candy while waiting on the two of them rather boredly. "You know, I wonder how long those two can entertain themselves with this?"

Xander shrugged. "Who knows? I was entertaining myself by listening to John and throwing reducto spells at a hardened steel vault door."

Tim pocketed the gems. "Let's go, we can always come back later when we have a reason to want cash. I mean seriously the safest place to keep our money is a bank on a dead world."

Charles chuckled, calling into the safety deposit box room. "I like just keeping my stuff in my Instant Fortress which I keep in my mokeskin bag."

"So grab a couple more stacks of cash and we'll be good to go," Tim said.

"Suits," John agreed. "I was expecting something more interesting from those boxes. Oh well."

Xander laughed. "I already have a million or so stashed in my mokeskin bag; I'm with Charles on carrying my valuables with me. In a pouch no one else can access or even see."

"Non sequential small and big bills, what's not to love," Charles said rhetorically.

Tim wandered back over to the vault and grabbed a couple of hundred thousand while he was thinking about it. "Good point."

John nodded. "I got stacks of cash that may or may not be marked by the CIA, I'm good."

"If we really want money from a dead world, we hit Vegas not a bank." Charles noted, "Casinos take in millions a day in small bills and have their own vaults."

Tim shrugged. "So what's next on the list of worlds to loot?"

"The Painting of Dorian Grey," John suggested.

Tim nodded. "I'm good with that, then we can bury it in concrete in our original world."

Charles pulled up the book electronically, looking through it. "You want to get self portraits painted by Basil Hallward?"

"Yep."

"Okay, sounds good to me. Immortality via fine art. We know where and when Basil Hallward is."

Xander snorted. "You guys might want to get elixirs of youth before you get these paintings done unless you want to live forever in whatever state you're in right now. I'm happy with myself, but I'm in my teens and great shape."

"I'm okay with that, I'm only in my thirties… though I could stand to lose a couple of years and an inch or two off my gut." Tim replied.

John yelped, "Hey! I'm dead sexy," then he ran his fingers through his hair thoughtfully, "but I could stand to lose a few years and some pounds."

"Then let's grab some elixirs of youth and have fun."

"Okay, then it's time to return to our original time and world and pick up another load of spices. We'll go to the original world we traded in and have that girl find us the potions," Charles said.

Tim shook his head. "Fuck that, we've got money and in Harry Potter's world they have spices and they're probably cheaper because it's not 2014. That and just in case the money is flagged. I'd rather be able to not have a record. You don't shit where you live."

"Yes you do! That's what bathrooms are for," John interjected.

Tim muttered, "Outside of that."

Charles chuckled, "Alright, lets go get whoever's tent is set up and then head back to HP land. I've marked this world in my bracer. Besides we can use a communications mirror and see how Harry is doing while we're there."

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0**

Charles had packaged Harry's magical items and shipped them off to him to be delivered along with a selection of books from Flourish and Blotts. Then they had gotten into contact with Horace Slughorn and offered him a 5lb gold ingot to make them a cauldron of liquid luck potion to be delivered when it was finished.

"It takes six months to prepare a batch," the Master Potioneer explained while shaking his head.

"Not a chance, I don't have that sort of time. How much do you have and how many are willing to sell?" Tim asked.

Slughorn got a greedy look in his eyes. "In that case…" he launched a long winded explanation of the costs and time required.

Eventually Tim snapped, "Fine, screw this haggling for money shit! We need the luck potion; you're getting old, we know how to get potions of youth, the real deal. I'm sure you could make a fair trade for a decent chunk of your stock for something like that. Hell, we can probably relocate you to a place that Voldemold wouldn't ever find you in addition, as we don't want him getting wind we have anything like that."

Slughorn looked shocked. "The real deal... Ever?" he asked intently, youth falling to second in his priorities over actually living to see a few more years.

"Exactly."

"In that case, we can make a deal. However I'm going to want some assurances that you're telling the truth."

Tim asked, "Truth potion?"

"I'll get the Veritaserum." He reached into his robes and pulled out a vial. "I always keep some on hand."

Tim glanced at the vial then at Charles then back at the vial as if to ask, is it actually a truth potion.

Charles held out his hand. "If I may examine the potion first, please?"

Slughorn handed the potion over though he looked a trifle offended when Charles merely glanced at it and uncorked it. "It's the real deal. Stick out your tongue."

Tim scowled. "I hate you." He stuck out his tongue.

Charles administered three drops of the solution then carefully corked it and handed it back to Slughorn. "I'd like to purchase a decent amount of that if you have it to sell as well."

Slughorn nodded. "Of course!" he replied cheerfully then proceeded to ask several careful questions as to the locale and area they intended to relocate him to as well as their capabilities in doing so.

Tim answered the questions which caused Slughorn's eyes to widen as he realized that there was actually a good chance that he could be free of Voldemort and make a hell of a lot of cash off people in a new section of the world.

"Are you satisfied as to our ability to provide the agreed upon items?" Charles asked after the subtle inquisition was over.

"Indeed," Slughorn declared smarmily, "and relocation as well?"

Tim said, "I vote America, I can't see them putting up with dark lords, they'd find their followers if nothing else, stuff truth potion down their throats, get the confessions, take their bribes then kill them with a slow acting poison. Either that or they'd just loot the criminals' vaults."

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0**

Everyone stared at Tim in utter disbelief.

"Why did you go with a nude painting?" Xander finally asked.

"I'm not completely nude, I'm wearing rings. Besides, I wanted to actually be able to change my clothes. While I admit that it would be nice having indestructible clothes, the fashions of the day are bound to change eventually. That and it's just amusing and disturbing."

"I'll go with disturbing," Charles agreed before sticking the painting in the thankfully black vacuum bag and sucking the air out of it before sealing it in its custom made inch thick lexan box. "So, where do you want to store your immortality?" he asked, looking at Tim with a raised eyebrow.

"I've got a room where I can stick it, I'll bury it later."

Charles handed Tim the cased painting. "Then it's all ready to go and we just have to test it to be sure."

Tim frowned as he realized that Charles' warped sense of humor was probably a bad thing in this particular case. "No shooting me to test it please."

Xander raised an eyebrow at Tim. "Just take off your ring of regeneration, and cut yourself or something."

Tim slipped the ring off and cut himself with a knife that wasn't his switchblade. "Huh, that didn't hurt nearly as much as I thought it would… and hey look it's healed."

Xander snorted. "If you expected it not to work then what was the point of taking Liquid Luck and doing it?"

"The potions of youth. I'm not going to just assume it worked. That's something Buffy would do."

Xander could be heard muttering, "Yeah, like going down into the Master's lair…"

"Or taking a long cold one," Charles said matter of factly, causing Xander to shoot beer out his nose. "I see you caught that reference."

"So are we still no on the shooting?" John asked, gun in hand and a disappointed look on his face.

Tim slipped his ring of regeneration back then accepted the gun and shot himself in the leg. "FUCK! Fuck... fuck Dorian Grey and his pain tolerance, that fucking hurt!"

"Pain is just weakness leaving the body." John replied with a grin, "or in your case, paint leaving the body."

"Now that I've got my immortality, we should probably have fun and get you to a cyber meat shop, I mean cyber doc in Shadowrun. Either that or we go to John's world and stab a clone of Xander." Tim said.

"I object to stabbing Xanders on general principle," Xander stated firmly.

"No the guy has the ability to create short duration clones and has the powers of Lobo and a Bizarro clone, stabbing him wouldn't be a big deal," Tim explained.

"No situation is improved by increasing the number of Lobo's involved," John said resolutely.

Tim shrugged. "It would probably end badly anyways. So cyber doc or Final Fantasy for magical items."

Xander blinked.. "Wait, there's a world where I got Superman's powers?"

"Yeah, there's a couple of worlds like that but the world he's talking about is a world where you got the powers of a bizzaro clone of Connor Kent and Lobo combined," John interjected.

"But on the upside even though you got kicked out of your universe you got to see Hippolyta and Raven topless not to mention Hippolyta's man-hating spawn," Charles continued with a grin at Xander's shell shocked look.

Tim shook his head. "I was fairly sure she wasn't related… never mind. That still leaves us with trying to figure out where we're going next."

"I figure we should head to Shadowrun and get the bioware mods cultured; it'll take time and while they're growing we can go off and do other things." Charles replied, "Are you going to try going in for anything?" he asked looking at Tim curiously.

"Nah, I figured I was fine which is why I volunteered to try the whole painting immortality thing first to test it." Tim replied.

Xander raised his hand. "I wouldn't mind something and while we were jawing I worked up a list."

Charles snorted, "We always figured you'd be in on the deal."

"I'm looking forward to seeing how the bioware performs on the hellmouth." Tim said.

Charles shrugged. "Like it was designed to do everywhere else would be my guess. Of course I wouldn't recommend going to a doctor in Sunnydale after it's installed..."

"That's what my ring of regeneration is for." Xander replied firmly.

John snorted. "So, armor up and head to Shadowrun?"

"That works for me. I'd like smartlink visor and possibly a communication set in it."

Charles handed out class IIIa concealable bullet proof vests and kevlar lined trenchcoats with lexan inserts to everyone. "Best I could do with what I had."

Tim laughed as he put his new trench coat on, "It works."

"Plus these…" Charles chuckled and gave John and Xander their Displacer Cloaks. "Only put those on in combat though, Displacer Cloaks would attract way too much attention.

"I wonder if we can still buy the old fashioned headsets for cyber decks."

Charles shrugged. "Perhaps, we can check the pawn shops."

"That could work."

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0**

Xander warily looked around the dreary Seattle skies. "I forgot that this place was originally a rainforest when we decided to come here." he said as he tucked his trenchcoat more firmly closed around his torso.

Tim snorted, "Seattle gets less rain than most other places in Washington, I've looked it up…" He frowned, "well at least on the western side and I don't really count the eastern side most of the time."

"It's still cold and wet." Xander replied.

"Look alive people, we're headed through gang turf…" Charles muttered softly as an assortment of orks and a couple of trolls and dwarves appeared from the shadows and alleyways on either side of the street both ahead of them and behind. They were all wearing black synthleather with red accents and many of them sported red bandannas tied around their forearms. "And on cue the Ragers show up."

Tim frowned, "I'd ask if they were the welcoming committee but what's the point?"

"Listen at these fools, walking through Rager turf after dark." One of the orks said as he bounced a steel pipe between his two meaty fists.

"One would assume you gentlemen have something you want to say?" Charles asked with a raised eyebrow, his hand dropping inside his partially opened trenchcoat.

"My friend likes shooting people; I don't suppose we can just skip the bloody mess and everyone gets to walk away intact?" Tim asked as his hand went to his laser pistol.

"Get them boys! Time to teach these humans a lesson!"

Tim opened fire before the guy actually finished his sentence, bright red beams of energy flying from the barrel of the Imperial Guard issued laser toward the mouthy ganger and burning holes straight through his pleather armor.

Xander briefly gaped before whipping out the .45 Charles had loaned him before and fired for effect.

John was putting a double tap in each of his foes from his pistol and muttering darkly under his breath.

Charles had turned to cover the enemies to the rear, beams lancing out from his laser rifle and dropping a ganger with each shot as he ignored the bullets that impacted his armored torso save for grunting and dropping to one knee as he continued to turn metahumans into cooked meat.

It certainly seemed like hours had past when the combat was over, but in reality it had only taken seconds. Charles was wiping blood out of his eyes from a head wound that had cut a raw red line through his hairline. "Everyone okay?"

Xander panted and rubbed his chest. "One of them got in a lucky shot or two and I think it cracked a rib even through the armor."

John shrugged. "I'm fine I think they decided they wanted to mostly focus on you folks with the lasers… Speaking of which, why didn't you share?"

Tim shrugged. "I'm good, a couple of shots to my armor, nothing to worry about."

"Thank all the gods that you grabbed me a ring of rapid regeneration." Xander said looking down at his chest where his trenchcoat was torn all to hell in a large pattern, "I think that otherwise I'd damn sure need a hospital. The once or twice that I got shot was with a shotgun."

"At least they didn't use fire." Tim walked around collecting weapons and anything that might be a credit stick or data storage device.

Charles shrugged and vanished the blood on his trenchcoat, inserting a fresh power pack in his lasrifle before tucking it back under the concealing coat. "Right… now for some repair charms," he said as he cast them on everyone's gear.

"How much do you think we can sell this crap for?"

"Hmmm, after it's repaired maybe 40 to 50% of it's face value at a pawn shop." Charles shrugged as he knelt to loot the goons behind them.

"Highway robbery but not worse than I was expecting. Did you have plan for finding the cyborg doctor?"

"Sure do, we're going to Travis Memorial Hospital in Everett where we'll speak with Doctor Emmanuel Johnson. He's both a practicing mage and one of the best surgeons around; word is he takes lots of clients under the table and doesn't let anyone know about it." Charles replied.

"You find his name in a book?" Xander asked curiously.

"Nope, I found him in a SR fanfic. Trying to get good information out of the damn game manuals for Shadowrun is a bitch and a half; most of it is left up to the GM to determine," Charles replied.

"In other words as long as we pay him he's honest?"

"Yep, and since I've seen his character sheet I know he's a drek hot surgeon and can get us what we want fast tracked through the system. He's also unhappy about red tape in general." Charles chuckled and used one of the ganger's commlinks and called a cab.

Soon enough they were outside the very well maintained and nicely set up hospital, the cabby had been paid with a ganger's credstick and they were walking into the waiting room. Charles walked confidently up to the reception desk and smiled at the pretty elf girl in scrubs who was working there on a data terminal. "We have an appointment to see Doctor Emmanuel Johnson."

"Oh?" She looked up and smiled brightly, revealing a toothpaste commercial quality smile.

Charles nodded, discretely dropping a credstick onto the counter while acting like he was reaching for one of the complimentary mints sitting in a bowl there.

She grinned and quickly gave them directions to the Doctor's office and after a brief and entirely pro-forma interview with three made up names being given and false SINs inserted into the system the Doctor was handed several gold bars and told them that their bioware would be available for installation in 5 weeks after everything was cultured.

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0**

"Now what?" Xander asked once they were safely back in the deserted environs of the park in the Night of the Comet universe and comfortably seated in magically repaired furniture they'd scrounged and moved in from the empty world around them.

"Now we go into a chapter of the story that's further along in the timeline and pick up our kit," Charles replied, pulling a beer out of the cooler at his feet that was packed in dry ice.

"That's just cheating," John grumbled good naturedly.

Tim laughed. "Nah cheating would be to write a story and give the guy the ability to create Pheonix level bioware… yeah I don't foresee that going over well."

Charles shook his head. "Deltaware cybernetics and anything over cultured bioware is personal property of whatever megacorp or government. It's not worth the hassle of trying to even acquire it."

Xander blinked. "What the fuck is Phoenix level bioware?" he asked as he grabbed the SR3 book and the Man and Machine book.

Tim shrugged. "Stuff that gives you mutant powers or things that are typically reserved for hacked pet GM characters, also known as Jean Grey level bioware." He smirked.

Xander snorted. "In other words it doesn't exist."

"Exactly."

"Then, well… We jump back, have the operations… Go to the underground area and get in contact with some people who routinely find things that fall off the back of trucks and buy some things and come back and either go to Star Wars or Final Fantasy land," Charles said and took a drink of his beer. "I have a damn Star Trek replicator I still need to install a power source for, because let me tell you, even 440 ain't going to cut it."

"I'm good with either of those, there are a couple of special game crystals that would be neat for a lightsaber that I wouldn't mind playing with. I mean we've got a replicator. Which means that all we need is to find a world where the hero died," Tim said.

"Easy to find in fanfiction; but Revan is goddamn hard to kill in reality. Much as I'd love to add HK-47 to our merry band I think no good would come of it." Charles continued, "Other than grabbing him I don't see a problem with grabbing Star Wars technology."

"Either way let's get going," Tim said.

"Not so fast padawan… We need to be outfitted first," Charles replied and headed into his armory where they had deposited all the weapons. "Streetsweeper pistol shotgun; a real wristbreaker, but it definitely gets rid of that pesky Jedi/Sith 'I parry your laser weapon with my lightsaber' deal they have going for them." Charles tossed the two they had from the gangers they met in SR to Tim and John. "Here, you two prefer pistols."

Xander blinked. "What about me?"

"We're going in more heavily armed than they are," Charles replied with a wicked grin, pulling out a pair of multi-barreled weapons with two magazines.

"What the hell is that?" Xander asked looking at it.

"A combi-weapon mating a Imperial Guard bullpup lasgun with an auto-shotgun. I found five of the damn things so evidently the drop troops I found them on liked having some versatility," Charles replied, handing him a bandoleer to go with it. "Five power packs, each with 50 shots before necessitating a recharge and five magazines of 10 rounds each for the shotgun. I don't have much ammo for the shotguns and our replicator isn't online so use it vs Sith only and just use the damn laser vs everything else."

Xander's smile lit his face up much the same way as Buffy's did when she was presented with something shiny and sharp. "This should make hunting vampires and demons a lot easier."

Tim looked at the weapons. "I'd say you were compensating for something but knowing our luck we'll probably be fighting Sith."

Charles shrugged, "I go armed for bear," and swapped out his regular bullpup laser for the model with the shotgun underneath and put five spare magazines of his own into his belt of many pouches, before pausing in thought and giving both Xander and John a laspistol as well. "What all are we going after on this trip?"

Tim said, "Final fantasy, I want a helmet with an auto-scan feature and some items that give me immunity or better against some of the element types."

"I meant to Star Wars," Charles replied and passed John and Tim a bandolier of individual shotgun shells to use in the room sweeper shotguns. "These are regular 12 gauge shells, but thankfully the SR shotguns can use them."

"Ah right, sorry. I was thinking about magical items that would let us ignore lightsabers. Let's see, selling lightsabers to nerds is probably asking for trouble. They've got some decent power generation; other than that, we can probably get better armor in Final Fantasy or Disgaea. Actually scratch that, we should pick up some armor there just so we can jump into it if we get access to item worlds through Disgaea."

"I had planned on picking up some Echani Fiber Armor while we were in Star Wars as well as some stealth field generator devices… Any other wishes on the list? We'll wind up getting a few blasters and some armor we can hit with repair charms from the Sith idiots I'm sure. It's also where we'll likely get some lightsabers," Charles continued thoughtfully, counting off points on his fingers.

"Sith Happens," John interjected with an air of wisdom.

"That works for me, having some armor would help keep everyone from thinking that shooting me is a good idea," Tim said thoughtfully.

Xander considered that for a moment before saying, "You're immortal, maybe them shooting at you instead of us is actually a good idea."

Tim frowned. "How the hell did he get called the White Knight?"

"Angelus was a fucktard who liked pushing people's buttons," Xander replied dryly.

"I never really found Angel much better in the series, he comes off as a creepy stalker but hey, you probably knew him a lot better than the stories. Are we ready?"

Xander threw his arms up as if he had just scored a touchdown. "Finally somebody else fucking understands that a 26 year old guy turned into a vampire 200 some odd years ago stalking a teenage girl is creepy besides me!"

Charles chuckled. "I doubt Giles was thrilled about it either."

"Probably not." Tim decided that explaining that Willow had probably been pro Buffy and Angel just to keep him for herself would be a bad idea; the guy needed a win. John would have said something similar but kept his mouth shut because Xander had demonstrated he was a lot more defensive than his usual canon self on the topic of Willow.

Charles shrugged and grabbed a sleek silver and black pistol and cursed softly when he found he only had two magazines for it before reluctantly putting it back. "Ah well, I wanted to play with my new toy but I suppose I'm ready. I'll just have to put them on my shopping list next time we're in SR."

"Same thing with the damned smartlink visor," Tim said.

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0**

Tim shook his head as he watched Charles buy several suits of armor, a few strange weapons and some weird electronic items. "One stop shopping in Star Wars, who would have guessed."

Charles snorted in amused fashion. "What else would you expect in a megamall type place?"

"A bunch of different clerks next to each other? Hell if I know, I've never actually been here before."

Charles chuckled and walked out with the case containing his purchases, stuffing them into the bag of holding once the group was out of sight and sighing when he noticed a group of silver armored goons with black face masks moved to shadow them. "Denebian slime devils at 8 o'clock." he muttered and continued leading the group out of the area they were in to an unoccupied area and swore darkly under his breath when he noted several black robed figures with silver armor atop them moving to match the speed of the goons.

Xander palmed the grip of his combi-weapon and shook his head.

Tim sighed. "Seriously what the fuck is wrong with this world? Did we pick up a damned 'Live in interesting times' flaw?"

John chuckled. "Probably."

Eventually they were in a deserted parking lot between a number of warehouses. "Here seems good enough to me," Charles said, moving to put a parked speeder in between them and where the Sith troopers would most likely be appearing.

Tim asked the Sith troopers, "Is there something we can do for you?"

"Present your papers," The bald figure with black veins standing out around his eyes spoke up, stepping forward to get in front of the group of Sith Troopers.

"Seriously? You took us to a Sith world?" Tim sighed.

"Darth Malak is attacking the Republic right now, not exactly much I can do about that," Charles replied.

The Sith commander frowned and ignited his lightsaber, and then Xander yelled from behind the group of Sith as he lowered his stealth field, "Get down!" just as a pair of grenades rolled in amongst the Sith and went off in a conflagration of fire and shrapnel amongst the group of soldiers and their Sith masters.

Tim sighed as he pulled out his wand and started using reductos on the scattered and disorganized troops.

Charles flipped the switch on his combi-weapon and hosed the four very unhappy Sith with buckshot. John meanwhile was calmly shooting crippled Sith soldiers with a three round burst of laser fire each.

Tim muttered, "You know, if we weren't concerned about the inbuilt shitty biofeedback loop, the force powers are probably some form of magic."

Charles gave Xander a big thumbs up as he swapped magazines for his shotgun. "Good call on the grenades, definitely made dealing with them easier."

"I figured that the workers who are watching us out the windows back there didn't need Sith shooting up all their stuff… Or them, the troopers in this game are actually fairly accurate but not that accurate," Xander replied.

Charles chuckled and the two of them began stripping the gear off the bodies and hitting the items with cleaning and repair charms and stuffing them into the bag of holding.

Tim smirked as he selected a pair of lightsabers for his growing weapons collection.

"On that note lets get the fuck out of here," John said firmly as he scanned for more hostiles.


	5. Chapter 5 - Mass Exodus

Charles smiled happily. "Daern's Instant Fortress wired for electricity; check. Also wired for internet with the whole tower getting essentially five bars of wireless if it's within range of any sort of signal since it's essentially a huge signal booster in and of itself; also check…"

Xander twisted and flexed until his back popped. "Furniture moved to permanent configuration or at least a more permanent configuration; check. Harry Potter magic extending the room we have available and providing heat and light, which when necessary can augment or replace the electric devices in case the micro-fusion pack goes down or needs to be refueled or something, check. Also installed were wizarding toilets and showers; thank the gods."

"Armory organized by something other than the 'stick it where it fits' principle; check." John chuckled. "Armor and weapons all up on various racks where they can be grabbed and donned as necessary; check. I've also organized the library and dvd collections. You're much more of a computer guy than I am so you'll have to set up the hardware."

"Shadowrun mission planned for picking up the other things we wanted; check," Tim interjected.

Charles nodded as he picked up the tablet where the list resided. "Hmmm; cyberdeck with neural net instead of datajacks or a neural net adaptor… Okay, I'm not sure if it'll be useful anywhere except SR but we can grab some. Smartgun armored sunglasses and smartgun circuitry for installation in all and sundry weapons, some SR armor… I'm not sure how it'll measure up against Star Wars kit, but I'm more than willing to buy some to check." He burst out laughing when he saw the "Guns, Guns, Guns!" entry with the smiley face. "Cute."

Tim shrugged and chuckled. "You seem to have a thing for guns so I thought we'd make a note to pick some more up."

"Also on the list is a trip to AD&D to pick up sorcerous abilities via stabbing from a group of sorcerers that the world in question can do without… Sounds plausible and like an excellent backup for when HP magic just isn't cutting it. Anyone seen a module where they make up a lot of the enemies?" Charles asked curiously.

Tim shrugged. "Not yet, but I haven't went through all the OGL products or anything yet either. I'd like to go after some warlocks as well because they have some really nice abilities."

"A trip to Disgaea to reincarnate to give us these abilities naturally…" Charles shrugged, "also seems feasible. A trip to one of those Final Fantasy VII fanfics where the materia abilities become skills when mastered; definite check… A trip to Skyrim for crafting abilities such as enchanting and alchemy. Also notes here to pick up an alchemy setup and an enchanting table. Someone also seems to want a staff enchanter if we can talk the Telvanni mage on Solstheim out of one."

Xander nodded excitedly in agreement with the list. "I've been playing Skyrim with all your mods, and that stuff is awesome. Even some of the basic enchantments seem like they'd be vastly useful."

Tim scratched his beard and sipped at his apple cider obviously thinking hard. "I think the replicator ought to be able to duplicate the soul gems; empty ones at least. Enchanting a weapon with Soul Trap or Fiery Soul trap would handle filling them."

"The treasury is set up also; with the massive amounts of coin sorted into multi-compartment trunks, ingots sorted into another one and various jewelry set where it won't get broken or messed up. Regular bills and suspect currency are in two separate clearly marked locations." John continued. "I had wondered what all the marble racks were for, but with you mentioning Final Fantasy VII it makes more sense."

"The medicine chest and potions racks are startlingly empty save for Felix Felicis and Veritaserum along with a few Potions of Youth." Charles thoughtfully continued going through the preparations they'd set up for their living area. "The additional electronics we'll buy on SR Earth since they have far better equivalents for LCD screens and things and far more robust computers in terms of hardware. Assuming of course we can get them to work with DVD/Blu-Ray players and game consoles from our time period."

"The library is mostly bare at this point aside from the stuff we grabbed from Flourish and Blotts and Borgin and Burkes and our game manual collections," Tim interjected. "Our entertainment center is mostly consist of what you had at your place; though why you bought so many tablets and laptops I'm not sure?" he said looking at Charles curiously.

"I was tired of having the tablets break, the laptops were a spur of the moment thing. Speaking of which I need to setup the LAN and a server section so we can download copies of our favorite fanfiction sites just in case we need a backup or a place to store fics and such that isn't the mainstream net," Charles finished thoughtfully as he nursed his beer.

"What are you thinking?" John asked with a raised eyebrow as he lit a cigarette. "I know that thoughtful look by now."

"I'm thinking that using a setup sort of like Neo in the program where Tank provides him with a room full of guns in the Matrix could be very useful but it would also take a whole lot of the fun out of this whole thing if we meta-gamed like that," Charles replied as he tossed a rubber ball against the wall and caught it when it bounced back.

The others frowned thoughtfully and exchanged looks between them.

"The universe also may not like the setup at all; I mean, someone somewhere put this," he waved his left arm with the vambrace in the air briefly, "out into the world for someone to find and play with. I'm betting because it amuses the hell out of them to watch. Using a blatantly metagaming setup for all the stuff we want and then sitting on our asses writing fanfiction or just going to hang out with Xander in Sunnydale is something I'm betting they won't appreciate." Charles flopped back onto the couch he was sitting on looking pensively at his beer bottle. "Of course if you think I'm wrong I'm willing to be overruled after a bit more prep work."

Tim shrugged. "I'm perfectly content to run around exploring and having adventures, metagaming doesn't sound all that amusing."

"Or all that fun really; I enjoy wandering around all these different worlds," Charles agreed.

Xander chuckled. "Personally; I'm glad you guys like exploring places, and that John has a really high bullshit tolerance. My life got much better because of it."

"Personally I like the pretty ones…" John looked around when everyone just gave him strange looks. "What, am I the only person who's seen The Crow?"

"I've seen the Crow, I don't remember the line," Charles replied.

"His half sister who likes to freebase eyeballs said it," John reminded them.

"How do you freebase with eyeballs? I thought freebasing was mixing heroin and cocaine?" Charles replied with a raised eyebrow.

"It's also referred to as setting things on fire and snorting them," John replied.

"What? You mean it's not about jumping off things?" Tim asked.

"No, that's base jumping," John said, puffing on his cigarette.

"Hmmm…" Xander hummed while glancing over at the thick electrical conduit ran through their home expansion. "You know what we forgot?"

"What?"

Tim jokingly asked, "Hookers?"

"A droid that could have handled all this crap for us," Xander replied, shaking his head at Tim and waved his hand at the metal sheathed insulated cable running along the walls.

"You, I've got an idea, if we're looking for servants that are worth a damn we should look at grabbing a house elf and reincarnating them once we get to Disgaea."

"I don't know whether to be intrigued or horrified; Evil Overlord Dobby says you will be making messes for Dobby to clean or Dobby will be making mess of you!" John chortled.

"I was thinking more about Winky or something but either way, I think it works," Tim replied.

"Either way, it won't be boring that's for sure," John mused.

"We have been working like house elves." Charles shook his head. "Trust our ability to plan shit out to fail when it comes time for us to actually set this stuff up."

"Okay, new plan, we grab Dobby from right before his death in the book and turn him into a hero."

Charles shrugged. "If we're jumping in that late into a canon storyline? I'm just gonna shoot Death Eaters. No need for a convoluted plan to turn Dobby into the hero; Mr. Shotgun or Mr. Lasgun can handle DE's just fine."

"Or we could make Kreacher the elf that lived. We can probably find a story where Regulus became a hero or something. I mean if we're going off the deep end we might as well do it with style." Tim shook his head. "Never mind, that's work on that after we run out of other things to do."

"I completely forgot what we were talking about," John muttered.

Charles just shook his head. "Basically we're trying to plan out what to do next… Other than sit around on our butts reading fanfiction now that we've got housing and treasure storage handled."

"Let's just go to Disgaea and get that out of the way," Tim interjected.

"Can't until we go back to SR and get our parts installed."

"Then let's just go and get the parts."

"To the Armory then." Charles said, getting up and heading into the armory after snagging a few vials of liquid luck. "What does everyone want for this foray into Shadowrun? This one will likely be longer than the last one since we have to go shopping as well as get surgery done."

"Laser and power packs, maybe some armor just so they avoid shooting me," Tim smirked.

Xander shrugged. "Just kit me out with the same stuff I took to Star Wars and one of those Echani Fiberweave suits and some of those grenades."

"Grenades," John muttered shoving some in his belt of many pouches. "Hmmm, corndogs and Mountain Dew, check. .45 with HE rounds, several extra clips, lightsaber… nah I'd cut my own head off."

"You do know we have laser weapons now right?" Charles asked.

"Yes, but the gun is loud and saves me having to yell Blam! Blam! while I'm shooting people, " John explained. "Did anyone pick up anything like a shield belt?"

"No, they suck in Star Wars," Tim said.

"I have my grenades, I have my gun, and I have Tim the immortal to hide behind as a human meat shield, I'm good," John said.

Charles grabbed a set of Echani Fiberweave for himself and threw his trenchcoat with the lexan plates and kevlar lining on over it after selecting the same weapons from his trip to Star Wars.

"Okay, to Shadowrun again!" Xander crowed and looked expectantly at Charles.

Charles blinked. "Hmmm, we have a problem. We need something to heal the after effects of this surgery. The text in the books says the ring of regeneration won't work on damage that happens before it was put on."

John blinked. "We know that they don't work that way though," he waved at Xander. "I gave him percussive maintenance to make his brain work right and he healed just fine when I stuck the ring on him."

Tim shrugged. "We obviously got a version from before they changed the wording."

"Right, objection removed." Charles opened the portal and they filed out into a deserted hallway of the hospital near the HVAC system. With a wicked grin Charles poured two full vials of luck potion into the humidifier before closing it back up and took several deep breaths.

"I'll go shopping while they're cutting you up and putting alien bioware into you," Tim said and was promptly handed want lists by everyone.

"Remember the sense-porn and the old netware pack to strap on for it!" John reminded him.

"Okay, no worries. Just make sure you get pictures of the surgery. I mean think of the scrapbook that would make."

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0**

Tim watched John and Charles toss back another round of alcohol, "So now what? You've increased your natural abilities with alien DNA, so now we go forth and raid Disgaea, right?""

"We did what now?" John asked confusedly.

"You put bioware in your body, where did you expect the enhancements to come from?"

"Well I had the doctor do that, I'm not that good," John muttered.

"From the gene lab like everything else in Shadowrun?" Xander deadpanned.

Tim shrugged as he tried unsuccessfully to keep the smirk off his face. "I'll stick to my completely unreasonable theory that they're using dragon or alien DNA for the boosts thank you very much."

Charles snorted.

"I wouldn't mind a little dragon DNA; I'm draggin' ass most mornings anyway," John said.

"We can probably find something for that."

"Any luck on sorcerers?" Charles chuckled with a raised eyebrow. "Evil sorcerers are a great way to gain the Dragon Blooded feat in 3.5e with our warlock athame from Charmed."

"Nope, though we can probably search around for home grown games, I know in my world I have a city filled with mages and sorcerers." Tim replied.

"Question; did we enhance Xander enough to survive sex with Faith?" John asked curiously and out of the blue.

Charles chuckled. "With all the knowledge of a version of BF Pierce stuck in his head? Xander is gonna have her crawling back for more."

Xander blinked and raised an eyebrow eloquently. "That's all assuming that I want to stick my dick in crazy."

"You've seen Faith, you want to stick your dick in crazy," John said firmly.

"I thought you had a crush on Buffy?" Tim asked a bit confused.

"And you played tonsil hockey with Willow causing Cordy to dump you and still haven't explained to her or went crawling on your knees for forgiveness," Charles replied to his original statement. "Judging from your willingness to stick your body parts in the mouth of someone who thought Buffy fucking Angel was a good idea? I think you already have," Charles said bluntly. Xander glared and Charles who just raised an eyebrow. "What? It's true. Willow is NOT a very likeable person as you've no doubt seen for yourself in my collection of Buffy DVDs by now."

Xander frowned. "Yeah; she's changed some, but she's still my friend."

"Everyone doesn't have my bullshit filter," Charles shrugged.

"Good fucking thing because that doesn't have a lower setting," Tim shrugged. "So let's hit Disgaea, then Skyrim then Final Fantasy. I have a feeling that we can probably make some friends by combining crap and sticking various enchants on gear."

"Actually I figure we should hit Final Fantasy first. That way we can learn all the materia based spells and reincarnate," Charles said and grinned over at John, "Hey, didn't you have a story where they had Final Fantasy magic in Disgaea anyway?"

"I don't recall doing that," John stated.

"Your fic where Xander gets cast into Disgaea, winds up healing Kasumi from cancer and teaches them to use magic and it's some sort of crossover with Sailor Moon too," Charles replied.

"I did what to who now?" Xander asked.

"If you can find it, we can use it. If not I'd be happy transporting into a world where there is a 'Dark Overlord needed' sign or something so we can just walk in and grab the reincarnation equipment. Either that or a place where the protagonist was particularly evil so that we can just stab someone for the ability to open item worlds without feeling guilty."

Charles looked over at Xander and chuckled. "Face it, you're pretty much one of lots of authors favorite characters. Alternates of you have done pretty much everything."

"I did what to who?" Xander repeated.

Charles handed Xander a tablet and pulled up the first of John's immense files of random crap. "Here; you find it and when you do you'll know; make sure to write down which chapter it is of which random files archive it is in so we can use it as a destination."

Tim shrugged. "Okay, open the portal to a Final Fantasy version where they're dead, retired or evil and starting out."

"Why? I was thinking we'd just go to a Final Fantasy VII fic where the materia actually taught the skills and buy what we wanted after Cloud was finished with his adventure," Charles replied.

"That works for me especially since heroes are typically unbelievably powerful by the time the shops sell anything worth a damn."

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0**

Charles looked around and winced. "This place sure is a shithole."

"Eh, definitely a post industrialized sort of dirt floored nightmare," Xander agreed, looking around the town warily.

"Well, lets equip everyone and get to work… It's going to take a while to learn everything from the materia after we buy them," John said thoughtfully as they headed into the item shop.

Tim looked around the shop. "Let's just hope they take gold."

The shopkeeper said, "That's all we take."

Charles chuckled and walked up to the counter and started pointing at various items. "We need five Wizard Bracelets, five sets of Brigand's Gloves, five Mog Charms, 10 Fire Materia, 10 Ice Materia, 10 Lightning Materia and 10 Restore Materia… 10 Potions, 10 Phoenix Downs and 10 Antidotes."

"I may close early today…" The shopkeeper replied as he began removing the requested items from under the counter and the shelves behind him.

John stepped up to the counter. "I'll take another five Phoenix Downs and Antidotes."

The shopkeeper shrugged and added them to the counter as well in a separate pile. "Of course sir, will there be anything else?"

Xander nodded. "I want 20 Phoenix Down, 25 Potions and 20 Antidotes."

"You might want more than that," John pointed out, "Buffy is like a lemming and some of the others aren't much better at times."

Xander frowned but then nodded. "On second thought, give me a full box of each of them."

"On second thought I may retire," the shopkeeper muttered and went to pull full boxes of the three items for the brown haired and eyed teenager.

"Give me two boxes of each as well, I want to equip Harry and its a good item stock in the pouch," John decided, "I'll put them in between the soda and corndogs so I don''t forget where they are."

Charles turned to John with a raised eyebrow then nodded when he mentioned Harry.

"Since he only eats corndogs and drinks soda it's probably a good thing he's buying lots of them," Xander muttered.

"That's why he got bioware," Tim replied.

The man came out with three cases in his arms and raised an eyebrow at Charles. "Do you wish to increase your order as well, while I have these out here?"

Charles shrugged then nodded after a moment's thought. "Sure, go ahead and up my order to a full box of each as well."

The shopkeeper raised an eyebrow in Tim's direction.

Tim said, "I'll take 5 pheonix downs. If I run low, I'll just grab more from them."

The shopkeeper nodded. "All that remains is the matter of payment."

Charles grinned and pulled out a large gold bar, setting it on the counter.

"I think we're good," the shopkeeper said after checking it's weight on his scale.

They each stashed their healing items and equipped their gear, making sure to slot the materia in the appropriate places with Charles pocketing the extras.

"Where to next? We should probably grab some other materia and I want my helmet."

"Where's the shop that sells the helmet?" Charles asked curiously.

"Black market, net stuff or at least that's how it works in Crisis. I'm guessing that we can find a black market and grab stuff from there."

The shopkeeper said, "Normally I wouldn't do this but you're such good customers that I'll make an exception." He reached under his counter and pressed a button that opened up a panel in the wall revealing a set of stairs. "Just head down the stairs and you'll find a 'legitimate' business man who can help you out."

Charles turned and headed down the stairs and the rest of the group followed.

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0**

"So, where's this cave and the magic pots?" Charles asked after they'd acquired the other items on the list.

"They give a hell of a lot of ability points for materia but we'd get those anywhere as long as the materia is equipped." Tim shrugged. "Let's just hit John's fic for Disgaea because the only time I wrote about it I used it for costumes. Besides, Faith was jumping bodies and blowing stuff up so badly that I'd be afraid to set foot in that world."

Xander looked at Tim and muttered, "Jumping bodies…" then decided that he'd just look the fic up the next time they had free time.

"Maybe there's a training course for item world creation or something."

Charles shrugged and selected the code for Dis-Guy-Eh and activated it when Xander was still in the Netherworld.

In the Netherworld Jerry the Prinny and Xander Harris stared in dumbfounded shock as a glowing portal opened right in front of them at the portal where Xander was trying to go home. Through which they could see another more muscular Xander with a really big gun hanging from a strap, as well as three other guys who were also armed to the teeth.

They waved cheerfully and stepped through the portal. "Hi guys!"

Jerry blinked. "Dood, there's two of you now."

Netherworld Xander blinked. "Yeah, looks like it."

The large muscular bearded man with a ponytail in the trenchcoat who was carrying the Imperial Guard combi-weapon smiled. "Hi, we're here to complicate your life."

"This is going to completely fuck up my fic," John complained. "He was suppose to end up in a Ranma ½ Sailor Moon crossover world and give it to Nabiki."

Charles chortled, with a big grin. "Infinite realities, your fic can continue however you want it to."

Tim shrugged. "Or you can go back to thinking this is just a bad reaction to Netherworld food once we've made some trades or something."

"I am… your creator," John told him solemnly. "I could light a bush on fire, but fuck that." John lit a smoke and pulled a corndog out of his pouch. "Corndog?"

"Oh man, my creator is a mustachioed guy with glasses… smoking a cigarette with a .45...I'm so fucked." Netherworld Xander whined.

"That was the plan," John agreed. "I was going to have you get laid repeatedly and eventually find your way home with enough power to seal the hellmouth and make Sunnydale safe."

Netherworld Xander shrugged. "Ah well, best laid plans and all that?"

Xander looked him over. "Neat… and you have minions."

Charles chuckled. "Now, what we need is the ability to go into item worlds, as well as being pointed at the reincarnation machine… Beyond that I'm not sure what we're here for, it sure isn't explosive penguins."

"Dood, not cool." Jerry poked Charles with a flipper.

"Why haven't you reincarnated him as a humanoid or something?" Charles asked Netherworld Xander curiously.

"Jerry has to reach God Prinny to do that," John explained.

"Interesting, so do you know how we can learn to send people to hell, I mean into item worlds?" Tim asked.

Charles shrugged and didn't question John's crazy world and how he chose to have Prinnies reincarnate in it.

"Special lessons from the gatekeeper," John said.

"I guess we'll have to talk to the gatekeeper and see if we can work out some type of deal. Do you mind if I ask her for training?" Tim asked.

Netherworld Xander shrugged. "It's up to her. I had to do a favor or two before she taught me how they used to do it before it became standardized."

"Are you willing to teach us how to do it then?" Charles asked with a raised eyebrow, "Doing favors for Xanders is typically our thing."

"You are really not my type," Netherworld Xander said. "Creator or not, I don't think I was created for that."

"I didn't mean that kind of favor," Charles replied, fingering his rifle ominously.

"Go ask Alice," Netherworld Xander said with a shudder, while John was snickering to himself.

Tim asked, "She's the one that looks like Cordelia, yes?"

"There might be some slight resemblance," Netherworld Xander admitted.

Charles rolled his eyes. "Okay, suit yourself," he said and walked off toward Alice's location without looking back at the group or Netherworld Xander and his Prinny. "Some guys are stoopid dood," he muttered to himself.

John just waited and watched with a grin on his face.

Tim wandered over to ask Alice about training knowing that it was probably going to suck. Tim walked over to the gateway where she was standing. "I don't suppose I could talk you into training us to send people into item worlds?"

Charles was smoking a cigarette a bit away from Alice to calm down without murdering local idiot Xanders.

Alice nodded cheerfully. "Sure," she replied taking a pamphlet out from behind the counter. "Here ya go."

John bit his lip and tried not to laugh.

Tim accepted the pamphlet and looked it over. "That seems simple enough… what's the catch?"

"What catch?" she asked. "Our economy is based on people going into item worlds for equipment and Hel, why would we make it difficult?"

Tim looked over at Netherworld Xander then back at her. "Never mind and thanks." He grinned as he looked over the pamphlet.

"I'd like a copy of that pamphlet as well please," Charles said to her quietly.

"Here ya go," she said, handing him a copy.

Charles accepted it and stuck it in his pocket. "Thanks." He then wandered back over to John. "Ready to go?"

John nodded, saying nothing, because he hadn't gotten a painting done yet and was not exactly bulletproof enough to snicker in Charles' face and he was unsure if all his bits were covered by the ring of regeneration and didn't want to test it.

Tim looked up from the pamphlet and walked over not wanting to get left in the Netherworld.

Charles punched in coordinates on his bracer and waved at Netherworld Xander. "Toodles." He crafted a portal, pushing the others in his party through in front of him before stepping through and closing the portal behind him.

Tim grinned. "Well that was amusing. I'd feel sorry for that version of Xander, but I'm fairly sure that he's enjoying himself."

"Of course he will, I don't write emo crap," John said cheerfully.

Charles turned to the Xander that was in the party. "You know, some people are really lucky that I like their characters…"

Xander nodded slowly and backed away with his hands up. "Hey, I didn't do whatever it was he did to cheese you off."

"I know, I'm just contemplating shooting John and seeing if things grow back," Charles replied, heading to the kitchen and grabbing himself a bottle of beer out of the fridge.

"He's just joking," John said, while pulling out that book on shield spells he'd gotten from Harry's world, because it never hurt to take precautions.

Tim ignored the beer in favor of studying the pamphlet.

Xander shook his head. "I'm pretty sure he's thinking about shooting you."

"If that was all it took to get him shooting me… Come to think of it I was always on the other side of the Net when he got like that before," John muttered.

Charles sat down with a somewhat creepy smile on his face and Xander decided he'd rather be in another room.

"How about we try and go into the item world on that slider device?" John suggested.

Tim snorted. "How about we test it on something else first?"

"Let me find a porno mag," John said going to dig through a chest.

"You honestly want me shooting naked women?" Charles asked dubiously.

"Nah, pimps yes; naked women no." Tim chuckled. "I think I can make it work, I was thinking about testing it on one of the cans of beer but I like your idea better. Then again the standard mode has normal enemies at least according to the pamphlet."

Charles shrugged. "Doesn't matter to me, though I'm not sure what leveling up a beer would do. I think leveling something that isn't gone in three swallows might be a better idea."

"Better taste? I mean it can't make it taste worse," Tim replied.

Charles chuckled and pulled out a tablet pc that was still in the box. "Okay, I vote we either start with a tablet or maybe one of those cell phones that thinks it's a tablet first. Though we'll have to buy one of those."

"We've got a tablet with us, that's easy enough."

John spoke up, "I'll send you to the item world then." He proceeded to draw out the necessary diagrams and such.

Tim said, "That works for me."

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0**

Charles looked around the blue room with the various colored tiles warily, looking at the strange little green android shaped monsters and pumpkin headed scarecrows and such from their position atop a pillar. "Huh, this doesn't seem that difficult. Then again we are on level one of a fairly low end piece of consumer gear."

Xander shrugged. "I have no idea how this is supposed to work and the Xander we ran into in the Netherworld didn't seem interested in talking."

Tim stated, "Don't feel bad, I'm guessing he was just in shock."

Charles knelt and looked through the scope on his combi-weapon and then fired the laser at one of the android monsters causing it to disappear in a burst of pixels. "Okay, they aren't that tough here I don't think."

Xander fired also taking out another of them.

"Only twelve more enemies on this level," Charles said thoughtfully.

"We should probably look at stealing some of their equipment eventually." Tim aimed at one of the pumpkin headed monsters and shot it with his laser. "Hopefully the items they have get better as we level things up," he stated.

Charles nodded. "Seems about right to me."

The monsters started trying to get to the pillar, scrambling toward them as they continued to fire their lasers at the beasts. "Huh, I don't think any of these ones have ranged attacks," Xander said.

Tim laughed. "That makes it easier, it won't stay that way but it makes it easier."

They were eventually the only ones left standing in the item world. "I suppose that means we head to level two…"

Nine levels later they were greeted with an item boss and a group of enemies ranging from archers to more pumpkin headed scarecrows. The bow wielding item boss was standing on top of a pyramid of blocks.

Tim frowned slightly. "You just had to complain about them not having any ranged weapons earlier. Just give me a minute and I'll fix that." He teleported in behind the item boss and used the steal ability he got off the steal materia from final fantasy along with his brigand gloves and moogle charm to steal the boss' bow and shoes. His smirk was wiped off his face as the boss turned and punched him off the platform. "Shit…"

Xander opened fire on the boss only for several archers to return fire on him. The boss' head exploded a particularly messy fashion. Xander took several arrows for his trouble, luckily only one of them got through his armor.

Charles on the other hand swapped his combi-weapon to his shotgun and fired a trio of grenade rounds into the massed archers and other enemies below sending spidery bits of shrapnel flying from the impact points the deadly little grenades hit.

"That's just cheating," Xander muttered. "When and where did you get those?"

"Had Tim pick them up when he went shopping in Shadowrun; fifty year old weapons tech isn't that difficult to acquire there after all, and scanned it with the replicator to figure out how to size it right for the Imperial Guard weapon."

A slightly singed Tim teleported back to his place near the rest of the group holding the boss' bow and a pair of shoes. "Totally worth getting hit in the face."

"Yeah… lets try the next level," Charles replied after looking the bow over curiously.

The next level appeared to be a bazaar and Charles grinned. "Item Bazaar, which is good; we didn't stock up on anything while we were in Disgaea because that Xander irritated me."

Tim shrugged. "Is there anything of use?"

Charles and Xander proceeded to wander around the place and pick up food items and various sundry items. "Well, there are items here that we can use for on the spot refilling of HP and SP to use abilities plus they sell cell phones and such."

Tim laughed as he tapped his Genji helmet. "I'm not using MP and I don't care much about HP so I'm good. Wait, cell phones?"

"Yup, they sell cell phones in Disgaea that can call out of alternate dimensions like item worlds so I figure we can get some and stay in contact with people we want to talk to who are elsewhere/elsewhen," Charles replied.

"Okay, we should probably pick up a couple of those then level them up," Tim replied.

Xander nodded. "Our thoughts exactly when we had the discussion about what we might want from Disgaea."

"Let's finish up on this then go into something else amusing."

Charles nodded and paid for the various things he and Xander had selected before hopping out of the now higher level tablet.

John looked them over after they popped out. "Well, no one is missing any body parts; I'm assuming things went well?"

"Nah, it wasn't actually that bad, and hey I got a bow and some shoes out of it."

"What you're going to do with them is the question," Charles said and headed to the armory to pick up another selection of items he wanted to play with. "Hmmm, I think we should definitely do some upgrading on power packs and possibly lasers before we go too much farther. Also, our armor."

"I'm going to put them on, my old boots are worn and held together with glue," Tim sat down and swapped his old boots for the new magic shoes. "So we're upgrading someone's gun then using using the replicator right?"

"Sounds about like what I had planned." Charles grinned wickedly as he pointed at Tim after tapping his nose.

Tim snickered, "So we level up an item to like 29 or 99 and copy it right?"

John pinched his nose. "God dammit, stop breaking the world into smaller and smaller pieces, at least wait until we need to do it at any rate."

"Thems the facts, Jack." Xander grinned at Tim.

Tim shrugged. "Sorry, that's what I do for fun."

"Hey, I don't want to repeatedly go through every item we have and remove flaws. Removing the flaws once and then using the replicator to scan the near flawless item and distributing it seems like a far better use of our time and resources," Charles replied.

"Bonus; we can just scan a level 99 item and fight the item boss over and over to get legendary items." Xander chuckled.

"Exactly," Tim replied.

Charles blinked and then grinned wickedly. "I'm going to level a fucking Hard Drive… Or maybe the server equipment so we don't have to worry about failure rates and such mundane annoying bullshit! No more dead Seagate drives driving me nuts!"

"Still won't bring back your porn, man, those files are dead an gone," John told him solemnly.

Tim shrugged. "Yeah, fairly low on the list of things I'd like to jump into… but it would be useful so I'm game."

"Still better than levelling beer," Charles replied. "Then again, we could jump into the Scooby Gamers and buy an endless beer mug… And maybe con Xander and Willow or one of the others into enchanting us some other stuff."

"Okay… I'm not not opposed to that… but I think we need to level some of the best damned cider ever. Let's jump into the genji helmet, a wizard bracelet or the vambrace." Tim said.

"Can we replicate magic items?" John asked suddenly.

"I'm guessing the magical item part gets lost," Charles replied and shrugged then stuffed his ring of rapid regeneration into the replicator to scan it. "Just scanned as a ring; I think if we want to start the ACME magic item factory we need to level the replicator."

Tim grinned. "I'll send you guys into whatever item you want to try next so John gets a turn in the item world."

"I say we jump into the bracer," John said. "I've been itching to get my hands on my own personal wand of adventure since Charles got it."

Xander said, "That sounds like a great idea, except I'd rather have the immortal as a meat shield so I'm perfectly willing to send you into a nightmarish world."

"Since it won't come off my arm I'll have to be the one who sends you into the vambrace. I can't go into something I'm equipped with," Charles said with a shrug.

Xander muttered, "Fuck."

Tim laughed. "That was a good attempt though."

"One of you guys can wear my bracers of armor +4 if you want to," Charles said.

"On that note we should probably go to either Harry Potter or our home world before we chance going into the vambrace. I'd be able to live if we got trapped in Harry Potter land or my own but a dead world would suck," Tim pointed out reasonably.

"Yeah, I'd go crazy in less than a week; if we were stuck here permanently," Xander replied.

Charles nodded. "Everyone out of the tower; we'll pack it in and head to Harry Potter and set the tower up somewhere out of sight. I can study runes or something while you guys explore the vambrace. Besides if we go to the right fanfic they have ways of getting through various worlds anyway and if we get 'stuck' because the bracer breaks we can still figure out a way to take the long way home."

"Works for me," Tim replied.

Charles led the way out of the tower then shrunk it after everyone was out and reached for the controls. "Where do you guys want to go? HP-land or somewhere else?"

"Would anyone like to break Marvel with me?" John asked, "How many changes could we introduce to that fucked up world?"

"Yes, yes I would." Tim laughed.

Xander had a wicked grin on his face and was chuckling throatily.

"Where would you guys like to be at when we arrive?" Charles asked, flipping through various things on his levelled up tablet.

John laughed. "I want a copy of the symbiote before it becomes Venom."

"In other words the version that was the alien suit made for warfare not the alien race that consumed every world it landed on?" Charles grinned.

"Yeah, I'm good with that," Tim said.

Charles grinned wickedly and soon the group found themselves inside a church right behind Eddy Brock, who Charles dispassionately shot with his phaser set on stun and stuffed him into a nearby storeroom.

Tim asked, "So who are we testing the suit on?"

Charles shrugged. "I'm game, I've always wanted to kick spider man in the ass and I'm sure the suit wants to as well."

"I call Dibs!" John said with a grin.

"In that case we have have John test it, we don't need that level of insanity." Tim replied, "That's what got it into trouble last time."

Charles raised an eyebrow curiously. "No, he tried to KILL Spider Man when bonded with Brock. I just think Peter is an emo douchebag who needs a swift kick in the ass."

"That works."

"It's my idea!" John said and abruptly shut up as the symbiote flashed out of the shadows and began to engulf him. "Shit!"

Xander chuckled. "I guess that solves the whole who gets the symbiote question."

Tim laughed, "Yep!"

Charles cast Esuna and several cure spells on John and the Symbiote and relaxed back against the wall and waited for the process to complete.

"Ack! It's bonding everywhere! And I mean everywhere!" John shuddered and shivered. "I think I need a smoke and maybe a shower to cry in, give me a minute."

Charles laughed and lit himself a cigarette. "Alas poor John, we knew him well."

A tentacle lashed out from the suit and snatched the cigarette from Charles' hand.

"Pushy. He has a pack in his pocket," Charles muttered and lit himself a cuban cigar from a pocket humidor inside his trenchcoat.

"Why do I feel a huge urge to play pranks on Peter Parker?" John asked.

"I'm guessing that's because of the suit," Tim replied. "So now that we've derailed things with Venom, where are we going?"

"I plan on using the symbiote to make myself look like Ben Parker and go up to Peter and tell him he's a disappointment as a son and I never really liked him," John said.

Charles blinked. "Have fun with that, I'm going to go see a man about a dog."

"A dog?" Tim looked at Charles in confusion.

"Lockjaw, Wolfbane, some other character I don't know about?" John asked.

Charles chuckled and shrugged. "I'm sure something will come up."

"I'd rather get a werewolf girl if we're going that route," Tim replied.

"That would be Rahne Sinclair, staunch Catholic as far as I recall and dating… Cypher, I think. He may be Douglock at this point," John offered.

Charles continued wandering away and was suddenly beaned in the head with a brick thrown out of the shadows causing him to curse and blood to splatter as a huge boom exploded from under his trenchcoat.

"Mutie scum!" Came a pained voice from in the alley.

"Person who is obviously too stupid to live," Charles replied and shot him again.

Tim pulled out his laser pistol as he looked at the alley. "What the hell?"

"Human's First idiot who saw us jump out of the portal is my guess." Charles replied and walked into the alleyway with his combi-weapon in hand where the group heard a pitiful cry of pain. "Hey assholes!"

Half a dozen neo-nazi looking retards turned to face him. Several with blood on their hands and a beaten looking teenage girl laying there with blood flowing down her face.

Tim flipped out upon seeing the teenage girl and started shooting them all.

"Food," John said as his symbiote mentioned some new dietary requirements. "Brains or rather a small section of them." Leaping forward he lashed out with all four limbs, and then some as he grew some extras for the occasion, while shoving tentacles into the aural canals of the Human First members and removing something from inside.

"Eating people is stupid… We can synthesize any stuff that the suit needs in the tower," Charles said as he walked over to the girl, ignoring the stupid people with many new holes in their bodies courtesy of Tim's laser pistol.

"Hey there; you're safe now… They can't hurt you anymore," Charles said and proceeded to cast several cure and esuna spells on the girl while wiping her face clean with his other hand and a handi-wipe.

"I'm not really eating, more nibbling really,"John complained, refusing to eat anything from the corpses.

The girl looked up at them, shocked hope written all over her features which while extremely pretty had a distinct dusting of lizard-like scales along the major bones and near her hairline. Her hair resembled blood red feathered vanes more than a regular person's hair.

"Yeah, they can't hurt you anymore. You have some place to go? I know a place upstate where they run a school that can help you," Charles finished as he knelt on one knee so she didn't have to look up at him.

Xander meanwhile was vanishing the bodies left behind by the others trash disposal mission.

"That place sucks; and it gets attacked all the time. Send her to Night of the Comet. Hell we can send her, all her friends and any homeless we run across there so they don't have to put up with the shitfest Marvel is," John complained.

The girl seemed too shocked to respond verbally and threw her arms around his neck, hanging on like a limpet. Charles shrugged to himself and stood, barely noticing her weight. "Where to guys? Xavier can help with the whole trauma thing… Avengers tower might be an option but I'd prefer a different 'verse for that if we were going to use them. I can't recall the Fantastic Four being all that great with traumatized teens - or even interacting with them in the first place."

"Comet is better than those places," John repeated.

"Night of the Comet is currently nearly completely empty if not completely empty; not the best choice for a traumatized girl. Especially one who's from a city and likely has no idea how to get food," Charles replied.

"It's probably not going to be all that great until we get a lot of people there…" Tim trailed off.

"Won't be unless there's some sort of community in place."

"It's been like a week since the big game over, or a month," John said thoughtfully. "The food is still sitting on shelves and in fridges, perfectly fine… probably not the milk. Fine we'll get a motel room and order up some room service until we get a load of people who want to leave here."

"That works for me." Tim frowned as he looked down at the place where the dead were. "You need to work on vanishing everything other than wallets."

Xander shrugged. "Why should we care? We have plenty and it's highly unlikely these intellectual protozoans actually have anything worth taking."

"At any rate, we should leave before someone shows up to bitch about us littering like this," John said.

John's form shifted until he looked like a heavy set older man. "I'm going to go say hi to Peter. I'll be right back."

Xander looked around the alleyway and raised an eyebrow at John. "Littering? The alleyway is cleaner than when we showed up. Also, John - you're a dick and he's going to have even worse issues than before."

Charles passed out a pair of sunglasses to everyone. "Here, these will allow us to communicate they have a radio built into the arms. Wonders of SR and miniaturization. I haven't got the smartlink technology installed in our weapons yet so don't expect anything too great in that regard."

Xander shrugged. "I've got nothing against Peter except he's an idiot so I'll go with you."

Charles walked off, carrying the girl in his arms who now seemed comfortably asleep. "We'll meet up somewhere… I think I want to check something at the Baxter building and kick Reed Richards in the ass."

"Yeah, I rather like Spider Man, so other than telling him to become a scientist and patent stuff, I don't really need to cause him issues," Tim followed Charles.

"Excellent, remember the doorman is cosmic powered and can kick your ass, later," John said leaping up onto the wall and fading into chameleon mode.

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0**

"Isn't that Rogue?" Xander asked, spotting a familiar looking hair style.

"You've watched a lot of X-men stuff haven't you?" Tim asked with a raised eyebrow.

Xander turned around to address Tim not noticing Rogue approaching behind him. "I've watched more X-women, but really Rogue is my favorite. Powerful, competent, beautiful, and doesn't whine even though she's been given a shitty hand."

Charles snorted while trying to bite back a laugh. "Also, she's behind you."

Rogue glared back and forth between them angrily. "Are you some sort of dimensional travellers?"

"Something like that," Charles replied nonchalantly.

"Then why have you just watched instead of helping?!" Rogue snarled.

"Because I only got the power to travel to different dimensions a week or two ago and where we're from many versions of this dimension exist as entertainment and even though the writers … can't write by my standards they're really popular," Charles continued, absently shifting the girl in his arms into a more comfortable position.

Tim shrugged, "We're trying to help, I mean we'd have to be complete assholes not to help people where we can."

"Feel like moving? I know of a world with zero bigots," Xander offered. "It's got plenty of space for you and… well everyone you know really."

Rogue asked, "So you're saying that your group has access to a world without all of the stupid mutant hating humans and you're willing to help us out, assuming I believe you, what's the catch?"

Charles shrugged and nodded, absently petting the feathery hair of the girl who was still clinging to him. "What's the catch? Eh, no catch really… other than we're going to be showing up on occasion and essentially camping out and we're not planning on bringing a hell of a lot of the douchebag's that seem to be the main portion of the people on this planet."

Rogue frowned thoughtfully and Xander spoke up. "It's an empty world, it's not like it's gonna cost us anything. I guess the catch would probably be how you decide to divvy up resources and stuff. Also, another catch is you probably can't get back here if you want to come."

Rogue snorted, "I'm not planning on coming back."

"That works, do you know anyone else that wants to come?"

"That's a dumb question; they don't even know it's possible so why would they want to go?" Charles asked with a raised eyebrow while shaking his head. "I'm sure lots of them wouldn't mind leaving this mudball."

Xander shrugged watching the other patrons of the coffee shop warily as the others handled most of the conversation.

Rogue nodded and tapped her fingers on the table. "I think most of the people from the mansion would be interested actually. As well as several other mutant groups. I'd want to have someone check it out first to make sure you were on the up and up though, we've been burned before."

Charles nodded. "Well I don't mind playing taxi after you get the things you want to bring with you. But keep in mind the portal is only so big." Charles wrote out the dimensions on a napkin and handed it to her. "It's also circular, rectangular items that are too close to the edges may very well cause a problem. Nothing has been cut in half with it so far as I know of but I also dunno because we haven't tried taking anything bigger than a person through it."

Rogue smiled, "Do you have any proof, I mean stranger things have happened but…" she trailed off not wanting to offend them but at the same time not wanting look like an idiot if it was some joke.

"Not that I'm willing to use in a New York City diner after already having one run in with the Human's First crowd tonight. I don't need to shoot anyone else before my burger gets here," Charles replied firmly.

Rogue asked, "After?"

"Sure, if you know somewhere private and out of the way I can demonstrate the portal for you and show you around some place on the deserted world. Then you can truthfully say you've seen the place and know the portal works," Charles affirmed.

"That would help," she agreed.

John strolled up back in his normal form following the tracer in his shades. "I'm back, Peter is traumatized, and my symbiote is feeling better about the breakup."

Charles shook his head firmly back and forth. "I'm happy for you."

Xander snorted and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "You sir, are a dick."

"You can't say it's not deserved; what he did was like abandoning a child. No, it was like aborting a three year old," John said firmly.

Tim sighed. "Moving, on."

"OK, what'd I miss?" John asked.

"Evidently I'm hosting the mutant exodus party," Charles replied.

"So you are taking my advice," John said cheerfully. "Just remember I am still calling dibs on most of LA."

Charles shrugged. "I don't think anyone is going to mind you claiming LA, of course that probably isn't going to stick but I highly doubt a world that easily is able to support several trillions of people is going to get argued over by a few thousand."

"If that," Rogue said softly, "I don't really think there are all that many of us that we're going to be able to find honestly."

"There are other worlds," John said with a shrug. "Trust me, there are a load of fucked up everywhere you go. How do you feel about wizards?"

Rogue raised an eyebrow. "Depends on the wizard."

"Harry has it tough and their place sucks too," John replied. "You could have neighbors who do a dozen impossible things an hour."

Rogue said, "I'd be happy to get away from the insanity of a world that hates mutants just because we're mutants, I mean seriously what the hell is the difference. The world loves the Fantastic Four but they hate mutants; I mean The Thing is a great guy but he's a living rock of destruction and they still love him…" She shook her head.

"Like I said, this world's broke, let's move all the cool people to another one," John said.

Charles sighed and finished his hamburger. "Lets get started." he dropped a 50 dollar bill on the table to cover their food and drinks and headed outside.


End file.
